Inside Scopus

Rabbi Kennard’s role in our school is integral, there’s no doubt about it. He keeps the motors running, informs parents about the school’s crucial economic plans and referred to High School Musical as a ‘triumph’. Without him,the nervous ship that is our school would sail into the oblivion that is a lack of firm, strong leadership.

As well as a lack of coffee get togethers. You see, Scopus is an interesting beast. Its principal is no doubt a very respected member of the Jewish community, and, most likely, amongst educational circles too, yet so often one sees him pop up on letters to parents as a drawcard for all of the school’s delicious social events. It’s this mix between uber dignity and ‘what a principal needs to do’ seems to be a primary colour of the Kennard campaign.

He was quite irritated with me after I took this photo.

There are shabbatons with Rabbi Kennard, information evenings in which he is the main attraction, and one can almost taste the trepidation amongst parents headed to anotherwise unremarkable function, whose minds can focus only on the fact that they’re about to see this charismatic figurehead will do all those things that he does so well. Speech night? Blech! Speech Night with the Rav? Hand me my car keys! Those clever cookies at Scopus PR…

But what is the real Rabbi James Kennard like, one might ask? Surely there must be more to him than his sporadic appearances in Scopus life suggest. What lies ‘neath the dignified exterior of our Rav?

Love.

Reason…
Stands for R is for relentless, E for entertaining A for attitude and for those always complaining, S is for solid and O for outstanding N for now and its time for forward planning……

 Good game, Shulla.

When Mr Shulman told our humanities class that he was resigning, I felt a twang of pain. An unpleasant one. Jason is leaving. No more mentions of his brother Shane, no more openly hostile behaviour towards the attitudes of Scopus students and no more self-deprication and hints towards his mad rapper life. There is going to be a massive hole in our school, not to mention this website, as we lose the only person interesting enough to sustain the amount of articles that we gave him.

 Sometimes we were laughing with him, other times at him and sometimes the direction in which the laughs were headed were irrelevent; you couldn’t be around Jason and not crack up. Everything about him is genius. The achshav initiative, the fact that he proposed at a school assembly, his Age interviews, that he actually showed this website to his mates…damn it, there is no one else like him at Scopus.

Of all the press shots, you chose this one?

The worst part about writing this is that there is no way to fittingly send off the Shulmanator. Nothing could actually conclude the long and hilarious saga that was his. And there was so much more to learn about him! The fact that he’s joining the Reach foundation seems to make sense. Yeah, that’s sort of a funny conclusion.

But that doesn’t make up for the fact that this writer won’t be able to hear Mr Shulman calling a piece of paper a ‘Scopus Kippah’ or tell us that he doesn’t speak ’singaporanese’ come Year 12. This school wasn’t exactly the most enjoyable place to be in before, but without Shulla, there will be that less life in the corridors.

And seeing as how I know he’s reading this right now, I want to say to the ol’ fella that I’ll miss him, and that I’ll be buying the new album this August, without a doubt.

As many may know, Scopus played a prominent role in this Tuesday’s episode of ‘Insight’. The school was given its own little segment, and Rabbi Kennard plus several year 11 students were part of the panel. The Rav took down all who stood in his path, and one can only wonder what went through his mind when that oft-maligned Greens representative expressed his anti-Rav views.

Nothing would give us more pleasure than to be able to present to you the show in its entirety, but, as it stands, the youtube clips that we can use have sound that is horribly out of sync. So, for all your Scopus creationist needs, visit:

http://news.sbs.com.au/insight//in_good_faith_547814 and start from ‘IN GOOD FAITH PART 2′ (the Scopus segment is at the very beginning).

Just so that this website can have a slice of the pie, though, here is a clip of Rabbi Kennard socking it to the host of the show, Jenny Brockie. Damn it, the guy is infallible. Elequent and open-minded, yet uncompromising and persuasive.

We apologise for the massive sound delay. Rabbi Kennard starts at 00:46

Mr Shulman wanted us to let everyone know that the school has now put clocks in every classroom. Whilst this could be made fun of, really, why bother? They’re clocks. Sure, we could say ‘haha! school doesn’t even have clox! took dem long enuff’, but no. The lack of clocks was an annoying problem, and it has been rectified. Well done to all. Clocks.

It’s a clock. What are we going to make fun of? THE MINUTE HAND?!

On another note, everyone who’s reading this is now a member of the Scopus Humanities faculty. Together, we are going to discuss the curriculum, write exams and workbooks, as well as plan assemblies. Hopefully over the next week we can turn this new occupation of ours into something positive, for ourselves and for the school.

Term One’s over. A whole 11 or so weeks of non-stop learning and zany shennanigans. Every single student has come out of this term more intelligent than they were before, in my opinion.

How else could one explain this brilliant depiction of the word ’sex’ found on one of the classroom desks?

We’ll see you in a week and a bit.

What did the monkey say to his enemy?

Can’t stand ya, tolleranza!

How many roads must a man walk down?

Six/ seven, or, if  it’s in a maths lesson, eight.

Why did a sober man suddenly become an alcoholic?

Because he was in a positive drinking zone.

How does someone touch the roof?

By participating in a REACH program. 

Why did the boy grow up to be a critically-thinking, well-rounded and global individual?

BECAUSE MYP ROCKS MY SOCKS!

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Are they gone yet?

Coach Bolton: “Championship games only come along once in a while…They’re something special.”

Troy (Justin Joffe): Alot of things are special”.

Brilliant! And True. Brilliant and true. Alot of things are indeed special, not least of which is the phenomenon that is Scopus’s ‘High School Musical’. It has swept the ENTIRE JEWISH COMMUNITY like a virulent contagion. Everything is posters this, songs on the quad that, going to Subway them…Mr Shulman is coming to see it on Thursday, Shaanan is in it, Yavneh thinks it’s awesome and Rabbi Kennard even bought the T-Shirt. Madness!

Love the smile. Love the shirt. Love the Rav.

The musical itself is divided into two sections: The stage, on which cast members enthusiastically perform their roles and on which techies cheerfully/grumpily stomp (pictured below).

And the pit, in which the band throws in jokes all over the place, dress as Mexicans, chat with Lenny Bloom and laugh with (at?) Jules (again, pictured below).

“Sounding good, guys. I love youse all.”

The two halves are almost entirely different worlds, but this works and it works well. The band members get to nod happily at each other when each individual finishes their solo, and the cast members get to… do all those things that they do and make those jokes that they make (like, erm, LENNY!! and all that). It is obvious that not even Lucifer himself can put a stop to the runaway freight train that is HSM, and soon enough it will have captured the hearts of everyone you know and envy.

Just like in kindergarten.

It is a hard life here at Inside Scopus. One must suffer the indignation of not being taken seriously by the Rav, the strange disappointment that neither of us got to play Troy Bolton and, of course, that we are not representative of the whole student body of our school.

How can we help it? We don’t know what little Daniel Freedman in Year 7/8 thinks, let alone care! Oh, Daniel. It’ll only be a matter of time until you’re in Year 12 taking your shirt off and dancing on stage. Everything comes full circle. Well, in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator, we now present to you a five picture summary of the entirety of Mount Scopus High School. Suck it up, you punk kids.

Year12- Approachable, yet nonetheless intimidating

Year 11- Zionistic and good-natured

Year 10 - Party-goers with good moral values

Year 9 - Rebels with a”rough ‘n’ tough” sense of humour

Year 8 - Sweetly innocent, caring

Year 7 - ???? (only time will tell)

There you have it. The entire school generalised, in little bite-sized packages for your warped, computer-radiated mind to digest. So, now, whether you’re a girl in Year 8 that is never going to read this, or Shaanan Cohney, who is reading this right now, you can feel like you have been represented to your satisfaction.

If you’re over 15, get a job already.

Earlier this morning, a giant lizard with the capabilities of speech announced that it had moulded for itself a brand new form of Zionism which all current zionists would do well to do adopt. Details for the actual idealogy itself are scarce, but we do know that the lizard is a highly regarded Talmud scholar in his swamp, so those are some credentials for you.

Giant Lizard has new ideas for the future of Zionism.

Mount Scopus College has been quick to deny the legitimacy and practicality of this new belief system, as it does to most things posted on this website. According to the official statement,

“Mount Scopus College does not find such outlandish attempts at humour in any way amusing. If we were to laugh at any thing about Mount Scopus, it would have to be grounded in reality, taking an existing quirk of our school and exaggerating it for comedy’s sake. You can’t just make up some story about a Lizard and expect to get a baritone laugh.’ -The Rav

Giant Lizard dismissed these claims as irrelevent to the topic at hand, and he may be right.  There is no doubt in our minds that within the next 6 months, Scopus will abandon its current religion of choice (Islam) and switch to Zionistic Lizardism, as long as it has the full support of the student populace. And Mr Alford (he runs like, everything!).