Breakdancing club breaks the rules

Self-expression has taken a new form: breakdancing. However, this method of self-expression apparently comes with a limit.

Around the start of the second quarter, the breakdancing club at CVHS was cut for violating the “three-strike” rule given to clubs that operate on the campus. A committee composed of school administrators that monitor school activities made the decision.

“It was brought to [the committee’s] attention that breakdancing club members went into the mat room by using a credit card to open the door,” said Nicholas Whitaker, who directs student activities on campus.

Despite being given a warning, members of the club were caught in the mat room again, and the club was given a one-year ban.

Despite the ban, some members of the club continued to dance in 700 hall. Some time after that, Whitaker received complaints from teachers and security guards that the members were disturbing classes in the hall with loud noises, leaving the both the school administration that banned the club and the 700 hall teachers peeved.

However, according to members of the club, the noises were no fault of their own. Apparently, it was not previous club members that made the noises, but obnoxious students not originally part of the now-defunct club.

“The people who made the noises were mostly people who just thought they could be cool by taunting us and disturbing us,” said Michael Nguyen, a member of the club before it was cut.

After talking with Robert Patrick, the advisor of the club, Whitaker decided that the only thing that could be done was to “keep an eye on the situation.”

For the legitimate members of the club, even having to be suspected of disturbing classes reeks of unreasonableness.

“It’s just unfair for us to take the blame,” said Jackson Guo, another member of the club. “We weren’t even breaking any rules.”

The club’s ban will expire at the end of the first semester of the 2011-2012 school year, but that won’t stop members of the club from dancing in the meantime.

“Breakdancing is our way of expressing ourselves,” stated Guo. “We dance to express, not impress,” he added with a smile.

That may be so, but members of the club will have to wait until next year in order to express themselves under the official banner of the breakdancing club.