Meep!

Hot on the heels of my previous blog about Cartman, Kenny & Kyle's "f-word" episode on South Park (and the outrage it spawned over at GLAAD) comes this unbelievable-but-true story from Danvers, Mass.


The high school principle there has "outlawed" a non-word.

Namely: meep.


The word (or non-word) "meep" is the sound the road-runner 'beeps' before making his hasty exit and the nonsensical talk of an orange-haired Sesame Street character.


* ** *



Students at Danvers High School, doing what high schoolers do, picked up on the word and started making it an inside joke, "meeping" to each other in the hallways, in answer to questions and in general tomfoolery.


Principal Thomas Murray was not amused.


He issued a school-wide ban on the "word," no doubt confident that recent Supreme Court rulings limiting freedom of speech by students give him such power. (Read my "Bong Hits for Jesus" blog for one such example.)

When New York attorney Theodora Michaels learned of this, she was annoyed by such pettiness. Writing on her personal website blog, she says~

It's been a long time since I was in high school, but I still remember what it was like to be young, and chafing under what seemed like arbitrary and capricious rules set down by school authorities.

So in solidarity with the students of Danvers High, and on my own initiative, I took about five seconds and sent an email to Principal Thomas Murray ( murray@danvers.org ), Assistant Principal Mark Strout ( strout@danvers.org ), Assistant Principal Cornelia Varoudakis ( cvaroudakis@danvers.org ), and Superintendent of Schools Dr. Lisa Dana ( dana@danvers.org ).

My subject line said (in full), "meep."
The body said (in full), "Meep."

Principal Thomas was even less amused with this than the muffled "meeps" from students and reportedly wrote a similarly-short reply to Ms. Michaels:

"Your E-mail has been forwarded to the Danvers Police Department."

Nonplussed, in her blog Theodora wrote:

OLwut? That simultaneously annoyed and amused me enough to write this article.
(Plus, my train was late.)
. . . . .
Gee, I'm scared -- maybe the Danvers police will come to NYC to arrest me!
I guess they'll also try to extradite people who (I'm guessing) sent emails from other countries.
We can be charged with . . . what, first degree meeping?
Yeah, good luck with that.

When I first heard this story, at first I couldn't believe it . . . followed almost immediately by hysterical laughing!

I sometimes have a hard time believing we're actually in the 21st century now. The word police are still alive and -- at least a few of them -- living in Danvers, MA.

I'm going to write a couple of "meep" emails myself, just for good measure.

If Danvers Police want to find me . . . well, as Ms. Michaels says "good luck with that."