You Can Kiss Your Favorite Physical Education Class Goodbye
By Onyx Hunter
There is a small pleasure in going to lap swim, waking at the crack of dawn to take a bus a district away. My swimming classes make me feel alive.
Getting to this class is no mean feat, I go only twice a week and leave for city college three hours early just to swim, I even busted up my knee in the pool recently. Every second in that pool is worth it.
Coming to this swim class next semester is not possible. That is not to say that there are no work arounds. I took the advanced course and now as a result I will have to take a lower skilled class. Although there is no shame in this choice and no practical difference, why must it be done, and after four semesters of these classes why can I take no more swimming classes.
The answer is California Title 5 under Division 6; Chapter 6; Subchapter 1; Article 4 as it reads “District policy may not permit students to enroll more than one time in an active participatory course in physical education, visual arts, or performing arts pursuant to this section.” and similarly “may not permit student enrollment in…more than four times for semester courses or six times for quarter courses.”
The law is clear in these cases, and if it were not obeyed it could mean further disaster for the school.
Simply put, fighting the law here would be brazen and reckless, for such small fries. What this does say about the coldness of legislation is frightening.
Arts courses which had continual enrollment, slashed. If the intended effect were the actual effect, the law is cruel, but the meaning and intent of the law cannot simply be derived from the effects.
The law is designed to set precedent, clear rulings and laws to fall back on. Judges and lawyers practically wear a belt buckle with “Precedent” engraved in stainless steel. The abstraction of lawmakers from those affected by the laws is no clearer here.
Justice may be blind but she also happens to carry a sword. Let’s hope she can hear the few of us crying out.