On: Berkeley HS student tried to rig his own election,...

[nitrogen]

Student elections serve no purpose other than to decide who gets to wear the fancy jackets. Normally the election is rigged by having more money to give out free candy and make better posters. Sounds like someone just found a way other than money. If you actually cared about school smarts in a high school election, winning without being popular seems like a better sign of it.

[kelnos → nitrogen]

Winning by doing something unethical isn't exactly a positive message to send to a high school kid, though, no?

[nitrogen → kelnos]

When was high school ever positive, especially a student office election? The only ethical thing to do is to disrupt it a bit.

[kelnos → nitrogen]

That's a pretty unproductive view, though. You're not making anyone's life better by going down that path.

[nitrogen → kelnos]

If you value truth over ignorance, then exposing high school and its elections for the farces that they are is making people's lives better. Allowing students to find their own paths to fulfillment instead of relying on a silly popularity contest seems plenty productive to me.

Among countless other problems, high school elections promulgate the idea that there can be only one hierarchy, that there is a group of "betters" that should comprise that hierarchy, and that the only measure of merit in that hierarchy is popularity.