French classes renamed "Freedom Classes"

Silver Quips disclaimer: This article is written as satire. Please don't take it seriously.

French classes to be renamed "Freedom Classes"

In a show of support towards the United States, MCPS Superintendent Jerry Weast announced yesterday that all middle school and high school French classes would now be referred to as "freedom classes."

Weast modeled the decision after the decision of U. S. Congressman Bob Ney to rename "French fries" on the Congress cafeteria menu as "freedom fries" after the French vowed to veto a treaty authorizing the war with Iraq.

No changes have been planned for the "freedom class" curriculum, although freedom teachers have been instructed to teach their students the sentences donner le plus de temps d'inspecteurs ("give the inspectors more time") and nous ferons le veto la résolution ("we will veto the resolution").

Hall monitors prevent student from returning to first floor

Student Safety Committee members, patrolling the 2nd floor hallways during lunch, blocked sophomore Lucy Anderson from moving from the third floor to the first floor hallway.

"Where's your pass?" said patrol Allie Johnson to Anderson. "Sorry, you can't use the stairs unless you have a pass."

According to Johnson, Anderson replied that she had started 5A in academic support and was now going to eat her lunch. Johnson demanded that she get a pass from a teacher before travelling between floors.

Readers unable to detect sarcasm

The third installment of Silver Quips, Jeremy Hoffman's humor column, was not detected as sarcasm by over 50% of readers, according to a survey of readers.

"Is he serious??!?" wrote reader Joseph Day in a comment on Hoffman's last article. "I dun think that actually happened..... he shuld check his sources."

"What's really shocking about this statistic," said media analyst Rob Howley, "is the way in which the readers thought the Silver Quips articles were serious, despite the 'humor' label at the top of the page, the bold and italicized disclaimer as the first line in the article, and the blatantly satirical content."

Howley suspects that half of you reading this sentence right now will not recognize that this whole thing is a joke.