Added July 16th, 2009:
    Ah, this article. It's probably why it took me so long to finish my commentaries on these archives. This article is included for the sake of completeness of the archive, and because I do still stand by the basic argument that the previous unpublished piece should have run.

    However, I've been bothered by this article due to the facts that the editors of the paper had every right to make the decision they did, and they did so in complete good faith in accordance with the policy of not endorsing candidates. While I still maintain that the previous article did not endorse a candidate, it's easy to see how it might be interpreted as such. In fact, it's possible that different readers could see as endorsing different candidates in the same race.

    There were some situations going on during school in which I was not treated fairly, and unfortunately I allowed those situations to affect me much more and for much longer than they should. Careful readers, especially those in the know about what was going on, could probably see elements of my bitterness in other articles. And point blank, what I did here was to take out that situation upon people other than the people who were responsible for it. And that does not cast me in a good light at all. I then look even worse in that I was bringing in other decisions that had nothing to do with the last article OR the situation I'm describing here, and chewed the editors out on those, despite the editors' total right to do what they did.

    (BTW, I'm not going to go into those situations. It was years ago now and there are bigger things to worry about.)

    Also, removed from the heat of the moment, even though that yes, there were people at that school who, shall we say, weren't on my side in the least, I'd have to say it's very unlikely that they'd be able to get an article removed, despite my paranoia. The editors and advisor were far too decent of people to allow that, and frankly, it didn't seem to bother these people that I was a columnist.

    Honestly, in retrospect, if the editors made a mistake, it was in allowing this piece to run. It amounts to little more than a petulant temper tantrum, and quite probably hurt my reputation in the eyes of a few. But from day one I respected the integrity that it took to publish such an article, even an unfair one, that was so intensely critical of them.

    Both during and after my stay at Point Loma, I've gone through bad situations with people. I've had situations where fault was mutual, and I've had situations where the fault was completely on the other party, both at least from my point of view. This situation is a rarity as I see the whole thing as completely my fault, at least in terms of between the editors and myself.

    Jen (Newlin) Bell and Dave Bell are great people and were great editors and co-workers during my unlikely shift as a columnist, and deserved to be treated far better than they were here. I'm glad they haven't held this against me and still remain in touch with me via social networking sites. I only hope that I can remember this article before the next time I do something really stupid.

    On a side note, I actually really regretted this decision in just over a month. This article saw press on March 15th, 1999, and just a month and 5 days later came the massacre at Columbine High School. I really wanted to write an article then about how it was very disturbed individuals who did this, and not a clothing style choice, but I had already burned the bridge, so I was basically out of luck on that kind of self expression until I started blogging.