Alvaro Menchaca, Year 13
For the last four years, Thursday morning breaks have been an exciting prospect for high school students. Every Wednesday night, the Student Council decides on a music genre and announces it on their Facebook page, giving the students around 2-3 hours to suggest songs that they would like to hear the next morning. The top four songs with the greatest number of “likes” get played in the Cafeteria the next day. This has become extremely popular amongst students and has turned into a tradition of student life here at LGB.
However, by giving students the opportunity to openly propose their favorite songs, the possibility of songs with explicit content or explicit lyrics being suggested becomes an issue. The Student Council is then faced with a dilemma; should they allow these songs to be played and respect the freedom of expression of every student? Or should they respect the school rules and its moral code by prohibiting such songs?
Last week’s music genre was hip-hop and the chosen songs all contained explicit lyrics. The school administration and the Student Council were posed with the following question: Should explicit music be allowed at the cafeteria?
The LGB Express team decided to inquire the same thing of its reader.
The 3 voting options offered to the student body were:
- Yes, it’s the way the songs were written.
- No, school should not promote swearing.
- Yes, students swear anyway.
Well, the results are in, and they are as follows. In essence, this question had 2 answering categories: yes and no (although the yes option had two variants to it) and the results were quite strong. A staggering 84% of the total voters agreed with the statement posed and believed that explicit music should be allowed in the cafeteria. Furthermore, 61% of the “yes” voters, agreed that explicit songs should be played for that is how the song was written and it cannot be unchanged whilst 33% of the “yes” voters, agreed that students nowadays are constantly using profanity in their vocabulary that it doesn’t make a difference whether you expose them to explicit music or not for they are not going to change their behaviour regardless. On the other hand, 16% of the total voters disagreed with the statement for they believed school should not promote swearing, but should promote a strict moral code for students to adhere too.
Well, as it can be seen by this poll, times are changing and so is society. We are becoming increasingly accepting of situations which would of shocked previous generations; whether or not this is a positive sign or a negative sign only time will tell but here at Ecolint, we must adapt to this changing world in order to maintain with the school’s ideals of modernization and globalization to create individuals of this modern world instead of mere students.
