February 2021 Issue
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Table of Contents
- Fish
- Gardening Club Arrested For Illegal Drug Production
- Valentine's Day
- Last Day of School Year Designated as Mental Wellness Day
- Mackenzie Teachers Innovating New Anti-Cheating Measures
- Webcams Suspiciously Breaking All Across Mackenzie
- Valentine's Day Expectations VS Reality
- Mackenzie Social Distancing Policies Put in Place Due to Gum-Related Injuries
- Valentine's Day
- What are you going to do? Give Me Detention?
Gardening Club Arrested For Illegal Drug Production
TORONTO, ON – Today, the Toronto Police Service have wrapped up one of their most extensive investigations this month, and the entire Mackenzie Gardening Club has been detained on charges of drug production.
Throughout the year, Gardening Club members had been illegally using the school gardening plot to grow an assortment of narcotic plants. The plants were then refined into potent substances using the school’s chemistry equipment. “Someone’s been watching too much Breaking Bad,” Police detective Anaisha Agarwal commented in a press briefing.
Surprisingly, the reaction to the incident has been mixed from the student body. “They used to grow all kinds of flowers. Now they only seem to grow poppies” a grade 11 student named Muhammed Ali noted disappointedly. “I miss the orchids. I like orchids.”
On the other hand, some students will be missing the revenue. “If the government will not pay for the school’s air conditioning, who will? Our only option is to take the fate of our air conditioning into our own hands, and pay for it ourselves” a grade 12 student named Quinton D’Souza wrote in an angry email to the school’s principal. “The fastest way to raise the required funds is through the narcotics trade, whether it’s frowned upon or not.”
Despite the mixed response from students, Mackenzie’s administration has fully condemned the actions of the Gardening Club. “I am deeply disappointed in this club,” Mackenzie’s Assistant Vice-Principal Timmy Rice told the Flounder. “As with smoking and vaping, it is TDSB policy that all drug production be done off school property.”
Last Day of School Year Designated as Mental Wellness Day
TORONTO, ON - Today, Mackenzie administrators announced that the last day of the school year would be designated as Mental Wellness Day. The special day will include virtual guided meditation sessions, yoga lessons, gratitude breaks, and GIFs of cute animals.
“We understand that this year has had an extremely negative effect on our students’ mental wellbeing,” said the Mackenzie mental wellness spokesperson. “Mental Wellness Day will help relieve some of the stresses that our students face, especially in regard to the pandemic, online learning, and the quadmester system.”
However, some people have questioned why the last day of the school year was chosen for Mental Wellness Day. In response to these concerns, the spokesperson clarified the administration’s decision.
“With the quadmester system this year, students are very busy. Between all the lessons, tests, quizzes, projects, assignments, and studying that students have to do, we just could not find the time for them to participate in such an event,” explained the spokesperson. “There was just no other day to fit it in.”
No students were available for comment.
Mackenzie Teachers Innovating New Anti-Cheating Measures
New Mackenzie statistics report record high cheating rates, but teachers have devised a method that cuts cheating by 357%. Deemed the most brilliant idea ever, the method involves asking students whether they plan to cheat and punishing an answer of “yes” with the death penalty.
Teachers tested the method in several math classes. Early results yielded incredible success rates, with all students pleading innocent on the upcoming evaluation. Furthermore, some students have debunked all previous cheating accusations, resulting in cheating plummeting more than 100%.
If similarly effective on a schoolwide scale, Mackenzie will shatter the world record, and potentially spark a revolution throughout the entire field of education.
Mackenzie staff are exhilarated. High Minister of the Mackenzie Anti-Cheating Committee Joe Joe Joe Bob commented, “I believe we resolved this issue, which is an incredible relief. Our next idea was to have long lectures about the morality of cheating, but we thought that this was a bit too extreme.”
No students were available for comment, although they did laugh hysterically when Flounder writers approached them, suggesting their enthusiasm for the end of cheating at Mackenzie.
Webcams Suspiciously Breaking All Across Mackenzie
Toronto, ON – It was the eve of Monday, January 18th. The administration emailed all William Lyon Mackenzie students, ordering that webcams be kept on through their virtual classes. Completely coincidentally, at least so we are told, webcams have been breaking left and right, and almost every single student’s webcam has broken. Now, we should not have to tell you that this is one of the most suspicious moves we’ve seen by administration since the taco crisis of ‘92. As the only good news source of Mackenzie, it was our duty to investigate.
Fact: January 18th - Administration sent emails asking for webcams to be active
Fact: January 19th - 99% of webcams stop working
First, to more clearly visualize the evidence, we ran a supercomputer simulation of the data, and the results are below so that the public can understand the situation at hand.
The data proves that this situation is too damning to be a coincidence. We believe a massive conspiracy is going on right in front of our very eyes.
We knew that BIG TECH had to be involved, so we asked the key question: What do they have to gain from remotely hacking and destroying almost every webcam in the school? Was it money, power, both, or neither? This is something that we had to figure out.
We went undercover, from factories to product design to shipping. We saw it all. However, everything seemed surprisingly, even suspiciously, normal. In addition, all of the tested webcams worked perfectly fine, so we knew they had a mole in The Flounder.
We also discovered that almost every single teacher’s webcam worked. After countless hours of investigating, we could finally reach a conclusion to the investigation. We believe that this is a massive school-wide deep state prank on students. And this is not the first time that teachers have pranked students by telling them to do the impossible. For example, back in 2020, students were forced to use Bongo. We all know the devastating consequences of that. Believe it or not, this is the truth. While it may be ghastly, it is up to us at The Flounder to provide you with accurate information when all other school newspapers shy away.
What are you going to do? Give Me Detention?
TORONTO, ON – Virtual learning has presented many challenges, one of which is the persistent stream of misbehaving students. Teachers are frustrated at students who sleep during class or cause mischief during activities.
Recently, during a lesson, a Mackenzie student disrupted the class by showing up in pyjamas with their camera on. The student reportedly taunted, “What are you going to do? Give me detention?”
The teacher was initially flustered, but, after a moment of thought, responded, “Yes.”
After class, the teacher held the virtual detention session.
“I can’t believe we’re actually doing this,” the student sighed.
“Boy, you asked for it,” the teacher responded.
Due to this incident, Mackenzie banned virtual detention for the foreseeable future.
Mackenzie Social Distancing Policies Put in Place Due to Gum-Related Injuries
The 2020-2021 school year at Mackenzie requires staff and students to follow new social distancing policies to avoid cohesive chewable confectionary catastrophes, more commonly known as bubble trouble. Many students have found this adjustment difficult, however given the circumstances, it was a necessary policy to implement.
March 2020 marked the lockdown of schools after several bubblegum-related issues posed a risk to all denizens of Mackenzie. Shortly before this lockdown, students at Mackenzie had begun an illegal bubblegum black market, which soon escalated into a far greater issue. Long gone were the days of secretly smoking toilet rolls or eating drugs, for a new, much more dangerous form of addiction had been born.
Bubblegum from the gum brand Blow™ was modified by local drug kingpin James Simpson in order to increase bubble diameter. This new variant, known as Blow™: J. Simpson, did indeed increase bubble diameter by roughly 500%, however, there were many unforeseen side effects. Firstly, the rat poison used to strengthen the bubble seeps down the throat after chewing, causing irreparable damage to the body. A symptom of this is heavy coughing, hence the current stigma around coughing in public. Other than the health risks posed to the individual chewer, the bubbles have disastrous consequences when popped. According to quantum bubble-blowing physics and high-density flimflam theory, the bubbles are far too densely packed–leagues beyond bubble-blowing regulation. As a result, anyone within the vicinity of a pop experiences a blast comparable to several nuclear warheads.
In response to this issue, Mackenzie formed the Collective Regime Aimed at Pop-prevention (CRAP). After much deliberation with TDSB administrators, they created the current social distancing. The social distance of 2 metres helps avoid the blast radius, and mandating the use of masks is meant to prevent bubble blowing. Mackenzie’s new policies have kept the populace safe from further gum-related injuries for the time being, so they will stay in place as long as the risk of students Blow™-ing each other is present.
It is currently unknown why the rest of the world has adopted similar regulations despite the illicit sales only being conducted at Mackenzie. Expert trend analyst Reggie ÜnÜnÜn states, “Mackenzie is simply extremely fashion-forward. The rest of the world must have seen this as a fashionable trend and wanted to stay hip.” While it has yet to be verified, this is the most logical explanation one can assume.