Last week, IHS students were shaken by a sudden proclamation from the principal. “Attention, students,” Mr. Trumble’s voice said over the announcements. “It is with a heavy heart that I make this announcement: beginning April 1, 2019, IHS will be a compassion-free zone.”
The decision to remove that particular Core Value™ came after the Board of Education (BoE) concluded that continuing to have four of them was fiscally unsustainable. “Unless we are to consider a substantial raise in taxes, there is simply no room in the budget to afford Four Core Values™,” the BoE said in a statement released in early March. “We leave it to the IHS administration to decide which of the four to eliminate, but by the end of the month we expect the school to downsize to just three Core Values™.”
Following the Board of Education’s announcement, the community was divided over which principle should be renounced. “If we’re being honest, I’m not sure what ‘tenacity’ actually means, so I’d like to get rid of that,” said Julian Perry ‘19, who was worried about the presence of big, confusing words. “Personally, I object to the school’s obsessions with ‘ownership.’ The word connotes private property, and sounds like an explicit endorsement of capitalism. Rather un-Ithacan of IHS,” said Isaiah Gutman ‘19, another student vocal on the issue. For some, the idea of parting with any of the Core Values™ was simply unbearable. “I am the Four Core Values™. If the school takes away one of them, they’ll be taking away a little part of me,” said William Wang ‘19, as he showed off the letters T-E-N-A and C-I-T-Y tattooed on his knuckles.
For the final decision to put compassion on the chopping block, the school cited its uselessness in achieving financial success in this cruel world of ours. “Too much emphasis on compassion means we fail to teach students how to effectively exploit their peers for profit,” said a statement released by the school on the day of its big announcement. The statement continued, “Do we really want to graduate a bunch of ‘compassionate’ students who generously help others? Or do we want to graduate a class of winners?”
The Board of Education, expressing optimism about IHS’s future as a compassion free school, has already begun looking for similar cost cutting measures. The board plans to vote next week on a resolution that will cut costs in the music department by eliminating the musical staff in all sheet music; the move is estimated to save hundreds in printing costs annually.
