As a high schooler: I am seeing a disturbing trend: rampant and unapologetic cheating.
Like this morning, I was in French 2 and we were playing a jeopardy style game. The boy in question had his vocabulary sheet out and was reading to two different teams the necessary answers. He is the popular jock in the class, if reduced to the typical stereotypes. He wants it that way.
The teacher asked if someone had been cheating, and I went up after class and told her quietly what I knew. Unfortunately for me, she immediately singled him out and told him not to do it again—a warning was all—and I was standing next to her.
“Did you tell?” He asked me incredulously.
I saw no sense in lying: “yes”.
He got very mad, asked why. I replied: “it’s wrong and dishonorable, and you shouldn’t get away with it.”
Him: It’s just a game!
His Friend: He was helping you guys [my team] out too!
Me: So? It’s still wrong!
Him: God, it’s just a frickin’ game! Supposed to be fun!
Me: It’s not fun when people cheat. And it’s not like you learn anything.
So, now I am the official rat of the class, condemned socially, and shunned. Well, just another day at school.
It’s hard, sometimes. To do stuff like that. I know it’s going to make things very difficult for me, considering his posse of jocks.
But I’m not going to apologize for doing the right thing. He wasn’t punished. Hopefully he won’t do it again, at least in that class, because he knows I’m watching. Maybe he might learn something in French. But if none of that happens, it’s okay. Because I had enough respect for him to say: “that’s wrong, and it’s not okay. C’est la vie, as they say.

I think it was two weeks back, but there was this big hubaloo about the newspapers about the “right to know” “freedom of the press”, and whatnot. Before people get up in arms, I will say this: I believe that there are many issues that citizens do have a right to know on, and I strongly value freedom of speech as well as freedom of the press. That being said, there is ‘but’ to all of that.

During this week, I read many times the banal cries about how the government is classifying more documents than it did five years ago.

Well, five years ago we weren’t at war. We are in this thing, a “war on terrorism”, and the same newspapers that are making a ruckus over the lack of proper intelligence and security will in the same breath critize this protection of information.

Information on our intelligence. Information on our counterintelligence. Information on our security.

I wish sometimes that the people who sprew this crap (pardon my harsh language, but I am irritated) would realize just how much freedom of information there is in this country.

For an example, I am wearing a shirt right now from the Titan Missle Museum near Tuscon, Arizona, that I saw on my trip there. How many other countries would allow its citizens to take tours of a completely preserved missle silo? Let me answer that for you: none. There were no restrictions on photos. We were told the entire process of a missle launch, the chemicals invovled. I could sit down with the Chinese or the Iranians, tell them this, and not get prosecuted for it. Go to China or Iran and try to get a look at their nuke facilities.

All truth deserves to be revealed. But there is a right and wrong place for it. If we intend to preserve our intelligence, then we must preserve its secrecy. If we intend to preserve our freedoms, then we ought to protect sensitive information from those who would use it to take those freedoms away from us. Information is valuable: but when determining what is released and when, we ought to ask this question: is this more valuable to the citizens, or is more valuable to our enemies?