Less than eleven years ago, in response to 9/11, Congress passed the so-called Patriot Act to remove potential obstacles to the investigation of terrorism, allowing enforcement agencies to wiretap phone calls, the Secretary of the Treasury to oversee private financial transactions, and immigrant authorities to deport “suspicious persons.”

But its privacy-violating efforts to defeat terrorism were ultimately ineffective, as the vast majority of the “sneak and peek” searches it authorized targeted ordinary crime and drug trade rather than terrorist acts. Instead of protecting the American people, the bill funded a costly expansion of federal power.

Now our government is proving itself a repeat offender, appropriating $670 billion to the Defense Department for the fiscal year of 2012 to finance similarly unconstitutional measures. Destined to dig the government further into debt and trample on citizens’ rights all in the name of security, the Defense Authorization Act resembles our mistake of just over a decade ago.

The bill calls for massive expenditure at a time when we can least afford it.

“Despite severe cutbacks throughout the government and the lowest revenue levels in years, this legislation sets a defense spending level that is twice as high as [that of] the rest of the world,” says Rep. Anna Eshoo of California’s District 14, who voted against the law last month. “In order to be serious about fiscal responsibility, Congress has to take a much harder look at the defense budget than this legislation reflects.”

Rep. Pete Stark from District 13 also cited financial concerns in his decision to vote against the Act. “It is our job to spend taxpayer dollars wisely and efficiently,” he says. “When it comes to defense, we have failed miserably. [This level of spending] is more than just negligent; it is malicious.”

“This legislation prioritizes military spending over economic stability and the health of our people,” he warned.

While government officials like Eshoo and Stark rightfully worry about the financial ramifications of the Act, the bulk of media and public attention focuses on a matter of equal importance: the danger the bill presents to citizens’ freedom.

Though vague wording cloaks its more objectionable clauses, the Act does clearly allow for the military detention of foreigners and citizens abroad without a maximum time sentence or trial. This suspension of habeas corpus and increase in the influence of the nation’s armed forces are out of place in a free nation.

“I’m inextricably opposed to the concept of a military or quasi-military establishment holding individuals who are not combatants in a declared war without [habeas corpus],” says Alice Smith, a member of the ACLU Northern California’s board of directors who takes issue with the Act because she, “[believes] strongly in a system that entitles everyone to a fair and speedy trial.”

“Our constitution does not give the military the authority to act in place of our justice system,” agreed Rep. Stark.

Eshoo reminded Americans that the bill’s contravention of basic rights goes beyond the civilian detention clause. The Act also “effectively blocks the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba,” an institution that is “strategically counterproductive and offensive to our most closely-held American values.”

“It is one thing to have prisoner-of-war camps, where prisoners will be released at the end of the war, and are entitled to all the benefits of the Geneva Convention,” Smith says. “It is quite another thing to have Guantanamo concentration camps, where people are picked up and incarcerated on the basis of hearsay and fear.”

Despite the twofold, economic-and-rights-based argument against the Defense Act, its congressional backing transcends party boundaries, just as the Patriot Act initially attracted widespread bipartisan support in Washington.

The Senate passed the bill with an overwhelming majority: both California senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, voted in favor of the law, along with 96 of their peers, against only one dissenting voice in Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. The House approved it 283-136. And President Obama, despite threats of a veto, signed it into action last week, “[going] down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

Although the President claimed his administration “will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens,” the standing problem of an open Guantanamo contrasts unfavorably with his campaign vows to close the offshore facility and safeguard individual rights in the fight against terrorism. While Obama drags out the complete shutdown he promised, 171 prisoners remain at the detention center, and the assault on civil liberties continues.

PROTECT IP stands for “Preventing Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property.” The Act will give Congress—both the House of Representatives and the Senate—the ability to wield legal authority over Internet content, which has up until now been controlled almost wholly by site users.

However, Congress is not the only one with power. Internet providers such as AT&T and Comcast will be able to censor sites as well to keep their own names free of scandal. User-oriented websites such as YouTube and Twitter will also have the power to censor their constituents. They, too, will become wholly focused on appeasing the entertainment industry.

The creative content this bill seeks to protect is exclusively that which is copyrighted by the entertainment industry. It has an entirely monetary motive. However, anyone who has perused YouTube can say that not all content on the Internet is copyrighted or backed by multimillion-dollar corporations.

It would appear that the entertainment industry is trying to get in on the profit-heavy realm of the Internet. However, as it currently stands, there is no way that entertainment corporations would be able to match the contributions the Internet has made to modern culture. In terms of raw revenue, the Internet far surpasses any profits made by the corporations of the entertainment industry. With that in mind, the PROTECT IP Act would be a futile and petty way of leveling the playing field, pandering to complaints and lacking merit.

Should this act pass, websites like Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook, which thrive on contributions from individual users, will be faced with a threatening dilemma. Even if these service providers immediately eliminate any published content that infringes on copyright, the government under this new act claims the right to sue any providers who commit said infringement.

To avoid selection for the attorney general’s “blacklist” of sites operating outside of this act, service providers will be forced to hire employees to meticulously comb their sites for any trace of copyright infringement.  At this point, we begin to wonder where website administrators will draw the line, and whether the intentions of this act will escalate to a case of strict censorship.

Rebecca MacKinnon of the New York Times raised the excellent question of why service providers would “invite legal hassle when [they] can just hit “delete,” and introduces potential repercussions for this act. The greatest fear is that the United States will become a censorship-riddled nation, much like China. While it seems unlikely that the US will rise to that level of censorship (such as blocking search results on Google, including the iconic “Tank Man” photograph), the PROTECT IP Act gives the government the means necessary to become the kind of authoritarian nation we’ve always despised.

It is possible that Internet providers will go further than just censoring their own content and move on to attacking the content of newer, less established sites. If a well-known Internet corporation hears of a web-based start-up company, perhaps a new search engine, the larger corporation can easily target the new one for copyright infringement, whether the newer site is guilty or not. This presents a formidable barrier to entry for fledgling Internet companies, as their nearly monopolistic counterparts would rather there be as little competition as possible. Without competition, there would be next to no incentive for Internet providers to improve their services, thus depriving the Internet of any future innovation.

PROTECT IP keeps information and content from the public on the government’s orders. The very basis of our country condemns this act as wrong. The United States was founded on the principle of freedom of expression, among other unalienable rights. Regardless of economic gain, the government should never bar the public’s access to content, whether copyrighted or not.

This act would be better suited for an age where information was not so readily available. It is true that books should not contain content taken from other works without attribution. However, the very basis of the Internet is that it combines the creativity and efforts of billions of people. That is far too wide a range to be stifled by a pesky, selfish law.

The Internet must not become the playing field of corporations. Its essence lies in its reliance on user activity and content. If it were otherwise, it would cease to be a public forum, but one huge, convoluted advertising campaign, purchase necessary.

Bank Transfer Day and its following began on Facebook. Kristen Christian, a 27-year old art gallery owner in Los Angeles, created the event, stating on the BTD Facebook page that:

“I started this because I felt like many of you do. I was tired– tired of the fee increases, tired of not being able to access my money when I need to, tired of them using what little money I have to oppress my brothers & sisters. So I stood up. I’ve been shocked at how many people have stood up alongside me. With each person who RSVPs to this event, my heart swells. Me closing my account all on my lonesome wouldn’t have made a difference to these fat cats. But each of YOU standing up with me… they can’t drown out the noise we’ll make.”

Although Christian is independent of both Anonymous and the Occupiers, she aims to represent the 99%, and established BTD as a daring reaction to unjust debit card fees recently imposed on customers by big banks.

This debit card issue started in 2010 when the Federal Reserve capped debit card interchange fees at 21 cents per transaction. To counter this limit, big banks like Bank of America announced that it would charge $5 for every debit transaction. The public outcry was so great that BoA soon announced that it would abandon the plan for the near future.

However, despite the fact that BoA will not enact the $5 fee, their continued practices of exorbitant overage charges have pushed many of the company’s clients to the edge. The same has proven true for customers of JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo.

Even without issuing new fees, big banks still make approximately 19 cents per transaction. The estimated annual profits of the banks are as follows:

-Bank of America: $3,228,480,000 with 59 million debit card transactions

-Wells Fargo: $2,626,560,000 with 48 million transactions

-JP Morgan/Chase: $4,924,800,000 with 90 million transactions

According to ABC News, more than 1 million people moved their money from corporate banks on Saturday alone. In October, 650,000 people joined credit unions, bringing more than $4.5 billion with them and away from corporate banks.

As it stands, the only way big banks will be able to combat that enormous loss of revenue will be to foist more fees upon their remaining customers. However, while they may succeed in compensating for their losses, big banks will not truly solve anything. It appears as if they have not even paid attention the reasons behind the Occupy movement and Bank Transfer Day. Instead, they’ve decided to continue the vicious cycle of greedy capitalism.

According to the BTD Facebook page, 84,787 people have moved or will move their accounts from big banks to credit unions. Fans of the page have posted defiant declarations of their official severances from institutions such as Bank of America and Chase. The particularly bold have even posted pictures of them cutting up their debit cards or releasing the numbers of their no longer extant accounts.

While Occupy protests and marches have gained strength and notoriety due to their size, Bank Transfer Day will have an equal, if not greater impact due to its principle. BTD followers are finally standing up to the big banks and communicating in a language that BoA and JP Morgan can understand: the language of money.

In severing accounts and moving their money to credit unions, the 99% will damage big banks in a way that marches and Guy Fawkes masks could not. Their weapon of choice is not their voice, but their wallets. In taking their money from corporate banks, they will effectively deprive the monetary giants of their sole nutrient and hopefully bring them back down to size and to reason.

In early May, seniors were given the opportunity to ask a teacher or staff member to hand them their diploma on graduation day. This tradition was first instituted to make the ceremony more personal for the student, who could receive their diploma from someone who had played an important role in their high school career.

However, the administration has since limited the number of diplomas per teacher to sixteen. As a result, teachers who reach this prescribed limit are forced to turn away students they would otherwise like to accept. Seniors who have been rejected by a teacher they are close with find themselves in the uncomfortable position of choosing someone who does not know them as well.

This cap has been in place since teachers started handing out diplomas nine years ago, though this year the limit of sixteen marks a step down from last year’s twenty. This decrease has forced teachers to be even more cautious with the number of students they give diplomas to. Promising diplomas to students has even become a sort of burden on the teachers, and many have asked students to consider asking others before they run into their cap.

The problem now is not that teachers have too many students requesting their participation in the ceremony, but that seniors give up on their first choice before they even ask. If students think a teacher might reach the limit of sixteen, some will assume the worst and ask another staff member. Many want to avoid putting their teachers in the harsh position of having to choose between them and another student, and as a result turn to someone with whom they aren’t as close.

In defense of the cap, some teachers cite their desire to make graduation as personal as possible; they argue that if you’re one of fifty students receiving a diploma from one teacher, you’re not getting the point of why the policy was implemented in the first place.

However, the external rules do not foster personal relationships, and this arbitrary limit may in fact drive students away from the teachers who they have grown closest to at M-A. In fact, imposing teacher quotas and caps is about as impersonal a twist to this process as there can be.

Contention over both the caps and the entire process of teacher-distributed diplomas has put M-A’s unique tradition under fire. Some teachers argue that the cleanest solution to the problem is for Mr. Zito or the guidance counselors to hand diplomas to every senior, standardizing the process and leaving teachers out of it entirely.

This is the absolute opposite direction from where M-A ought to be heading. Graduation should be memorably personal, and having a meaningful teacher be part of that ceremony is a truly wonderful tradition to have. While doing away with the current system is a quick fix to the problem, it’s far from the right one.

The preparation for teachers distributing diplomas may be hectic, but most agree that the stresses of the school year melt away and the true worth of the current policy shines through on graduation day. Ultimately, the point of the policy is not about administrative facility or teacher preference– it’s about the graduates, marking their final minutes as M-A students before they go their various ways into the world before them.

The caps are unnecessary. If a teacher wants to hand diplomas to a small group of graduates, let them make that choice. If we want to make the process meaningful, the decision should be left to the student and the teacher, not to a staff meeting vote.

Administrators and teachers will likely be around for next year’s graduation to debate a new solution to the process of distributing diplomas. Seniors, however, only get to graduate once. Some extra legwork on the part of administrators is worth the benefit for our seniors.

The article, first published on April 1^st with another installment following on the 2^nd, consists of a spreadsheet containing salaries given out by the District. Teachers, administrators, and other employees are included in the chart, their salaries ranking from highest to lowest.

“I felt kind of exposed. Generally one thinks of one’s earnings as something private,” expressed English teacher Liane Strub.

However, under the California Public Records Act, the Daily Post has the right to publish the salaries of government employees.

“Think of it as an employee-employer kind of relationship,” says author of the Daily Post article, Ryan Riddle in response.  “If I didn’t do anything right, my boss has the right to know because he pays me.”

Many feel that privacy could have been better respected if teachers were listed by field of education, bracket, and hours worked, rather than by name.

However, Riddle believes that “it puts a name to a face. Speaking for myself, it would be kind of uninteresting or foolish for a boss not to know who their employees are.” More like putting a dollar sign to a face, actually. And although teachers’ salaries are certainly an excellent pull factor for the Daily Post, simply including their names with no other analysis is in poor taste.

Teachers felt that at the very least, more background information could have been provided about these facts to explain the reasoning behind certain salaries. What analysis the Post did provide was headed with the inflammatory title “Little-Known Perks For Teachers.”

“The article seems manipulative because of its apparent bias in its wording and presentation. Overall, it could use more explanation,” says history teacher Jonathan Senigaglia.

“We gave their jobs and their salaries,” Riddle stated.  “Would it have been more detailed if we had included things such as part time versus full time? Perhaps. It would have been more information, and more information is good.” Yes, more information is good.

The major flaws behind the article are a lack of research and context.  Without such context, it appears that the story’s sole purpose is to incite antagonism against teachers.

“They’re going to try and justify cutting this salary or that expenditure,” math teacher Kristen Trent expressed. “I think there’s an agenda, for sure.”

The word “perk” specifically contributed to the article’s overall negative reception. The term, without context, is widely perceived as a benefit or privilege, and many feel it does not accurately express what teachers’ extra pay actually is.

Riddle says extra pay, defined by the district, is “anything that falls outside of an employee’s contract, including overtime, coaching, or clubs,” and that he was only implying that it is an extra pay that comes with the job. “Any kind of reimbursement can be considered a perk. It’s just the terminology.”

Extra pay entails extra work. “I did six weeks of summer school from 8-2 every day, and it was grueling. That’s not extra pay just because they think I’m nice or something,” says Strub.

Riddle also says that he does in fact explain in a previous article the reasoning behind one employee, Thomas Slater’s, extra pay. But just one explanation, separately published from the statistics, isn’t sufficient. In fact, it’s rather irresponsible. The Daily Post should have provided explanations for every teacher on the list if they truly cared about the public  “knowing their employees.”

Presentation aside, teachers were mainly angered by inconsistencies in the salaries themselves. As a classified employee, college counselor Alice Kleeman says her salary is actually in the low $50,000′s, yet the article stated that her “total pay” was $75,192.  She also says that while she does receive some extra pay, it all comes from the Foundation for the Future, not taxpayer money. In fact, Foundation director Cindy Folker says that this year over $900,000 was raised for M-A salaries.  So actually, some salaries on the Post’s list were not funded by taxpayer money at all.

“I’m not comfortable with people making judgments or forming opinions based on erroneous information, as in my case,” says Kleeman.

The Daily Post has published previous articles displaying salaries of other government employees, and highlighted the Sequoia District last year. However, this year, the list was structured differently.

“The numbers came directly from the district and they cover the calendar year, which may be different because school employees are used to the [Fall to Summer] school year when they get their pay,” says Riddle.

Therefore, first year teachers, like Senigaglia, had only half of their salaries accounted for, and teachers that worked part time for one school year and full time for another, such as history teacher Ellen Jacobson, also had their salaries skewed in the article.

However, Riddle never mentioned the calendar difference in the article and he says that “perhaps he should have,” and that he was just trying to present the salaries more clearly to the reader.

“We analyze information, we put it in a digestible, readable form so that someone can read it and make their own decision,” he said.

That digestible, readable form consisted of copying and pasting the district’s financial excel sheet onto a newspaper. Thanks for the transformation, Riddle. There was little analysis of the teachers’ salaries, and overall, the article’s coverage was confusing, misleading, and incomplete.

Riddle remarks, “the article was written to cause people to think, and that is what good journalism does. Let them come to their own conclusions.”

Good journalism doesn’t present confusing and sensitive information in such a distorted way.

The Post’s portrayal of teachers’ salaries alludes to excess. By referring to extra pay as a “perk,” rather than compensation for an individual’s additional effort, they make it seem as though teachers do not deserve that extra sum. Presenting taxpayer money as the sole source of these “perks” hints that the Post wishes to incite in the public some sort of notion that teachers are overpaid.

Science teacher Jeff Decurtins says, “Personally, I think this whole thing is a joke. What possible relevance to any educational improvement is knowledge of a specific teacher’s salary? But even more relevant, our salaries are a joke. I used to work in high tech across the street at SRI. In walking across the street to M-A, my salary got cut in half and my hours doubled.”

Next time the Daily Post feels called upon to perform a public service, they should be sure to conduct their research more carefully. As high school journalists, we were hoping for a more competent example to follow. At the very least, they ought to apologize to the teachers they’ve wantonly offended.

Yes, the Sequoia Union High School District brought in temporary lights in an attempt to sidestep the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) that prevents or at least delays the installation of permanent ones. Yes, the town of Atherton has the right to bring this to a judge’s attention. And yes, the judge’s decision was perfectly reasonable. However, the very nature of the report itself is superfluous, because it can only show what we already know: students will be at school.

According to Protect Atherton’s Residential Character (PARC), the report is needed to evaluate the “potential harm to the neighbors of increased traffic, increased noise, increased influx of gangs or other non-residents, increased crime, and infiltration of bright lights, all during the evening, night, and weekend hours when no such harms presently exist.”

So let’s examine their concerns.

Traffic. Is the traffic for football games really going to be worse than traffic for the basketball games we hold at the exact same time? Or for the classes we attend every day? There will be traffic. But there is no reason to believe that Atherton can’t handle three evenings a year for which traffic is no more than on any school morning or afternoon.

As for the noise and “infiltrating” light, we hardly think that a football game that takes place before the noise curfew will cause more disruption than night games at Woodside, Sequoia, or thousands of other high schools in normal parts of the nation.

As for the gang members and “non-residents,” could these “non-residents” be the East Menlo Park and East Palo Alto students that pass to and from the Atherton neighborhood to get an education every single day? The same “gangs” who, though they attend Menlo-Atherton High School, do not have a 94027 zip code to their name?

Surely the only thing keeping them from pillaging your homes was the poor lighting.

PARC’s lawyer Anna Shimko claims that Menlo-Atherton “[has] not justified the need for the late use of the lights at all.”

However, Shimko seems unable to comprehend that winter sports are played in winter. Night falls at about five pm. Coaches have repeatedly explained in innumerable public settings that our new, later start time pushes games and practices into the later hours of the evening. PARC has heard these reasons before, and ignores them. In doing so, they deny the importance of having sports at all.

Instead of creating deliberate delays in an inevitable process, our neighbors should let the temporary lights stand. What better way to evaluate environmental impact than to see their effects firsthand?

Apparently there is no room in Atherton’s “residential character” for a high school football game. If given the chance, based on their intolerance for normal school functions, PARC would injunct Menlo-Atherton itself.

Despite complaints from parents, students, and M-A staff, we stand firmly behind our coverage of the allegations made against Coach Weston.  A good journalist covers relevant, timely, and interesting news in an objective manner, despite the controversy it may evoke.  In no way did we stray from this responsibility.  The M-A Bear News did not break this story; we only furthered the coverage of this undeniably pertinent article that was, in fact, broken by the Almanac and the Mercury News over five months ago.

The relevance of the story emphasizes the existing racial problems at M-A, a school which has been used by Stanford professors as an example of modern-day segregation.  Often described as “two schools inside a school,” M-A’s student body is quite diverse, but the classes are as homogenous as the commonly criticized private school down the road.  Therefore, using racial slurs at M-A is particularly damaging and further perpetuates existing racial problems.  To remain silent over this issue is to pretend that nothing is wrong.

Our decision to take down the story should not be perceived as a sign that we are easily influenced.  The content of our website is not chosen by our sponsors, the administration, or even our advisers.  Legally, all decisions concerning articles are ultimately made by the student editorial board in accordance with Education Code 48907; our advisers have no legal authority to restrict our content.  We do not revel in the opportunity to harm others, but we won’t make any progress until  we stop making excuses.  Ignoring this is not the polite thing to do.