About The Plug
by Josh M. McKee

January 27th, 1998

The Plug was originally created sometime during the late winter of 1994. Some friends and myself had been discussing creating an underground paper, but it didn't go anywhere. From the initial "brain storm" sessions (I hate that term, I have chronic geekomania) came the name - "The Plug".

One day, an issue of The High-O-Scope (CHS's official school paper) came out which included a letter to the editor in which a CHS student named Sally Harris publicly attacked another student named Del Harrow for not being a follower of the Christian faith. Her letter included several lengthy quotations from the Bible. It was my opinion, and the opinion of several others, the the High-O-Scope should not have printed that particular letter.

I started to write a letter of my own, but halfway through I decided that it wasn't enough. So, I got together with Yoshi, The Lunchman, and Masked, and discussed a way to make a more bold statement against 'forceful projection' of religious values (the subject of Yoshi's first article). The idea of The Plug was dug back up, and in a few days we had Issue #1 put together. We didn't have any art for it; it looked plain and boring. We wanted something that would get people's attention. I had a disk with some old (really, really old) Macintosh clipart on it, and it included a file of cartoon hands in various positions. That's where The Plug's fists came from. They weren't chosen for any reason other than they were the best looking of the cartoon hands in the file. Fortunatly, they became strangely appropriate.

I printed fifty copies of Issue #1 at a local copy shop. During the morning of April 14th, 1994, student body elections took place. In the mass of students flooding into the auditorium, myself and the other writers handed out copies.

The rest is fairly boring - there was internal conflict between myself and the "staff" (the first year we had a medium sized group of people who contributed on a regular basis), a horribly constructed "Charter of The Plug Press" (which I now regret every having created), but no problems from the administration, other than the gentle reminder not to leave stacks of The Plug in 'educational environments' (i.e. classrooms, the library, etc).

After Issue #3, a student who was currently a reporter with the High-O-Scope approached me, and offered me cheap access to some offset printing equipment. This allowed 1,000 copies of issues three and four to be printed.

During The Plug's second year, the 509J school district decided that it wanted to charge students for credits taken in excess of 14 per year. A petition was organized by another student, and The Plug assisted by interviewing various administration figures (including a joint interview between myself and a HOS writer). Despite nasty remarks from the Superindendant (at the time, Bruce Harter), the petitioners gained enough support to force the school board to take back their descision.

Five issues of The Plug came out in 1994; Another five (I think) came out in early 1995. During the 95-96 school year I was a senior, and had taken the position of News Editor on the High-O-Scope (HOS), so The Plug was not put out during that period of time.

An incident had occured on the Oregon State University campus in which two white students urinated on and shouted racial slurs at a black student. There was a lot of discussion of this between HOS students. Everyone agreed that it was wrong, and that the two white students should be punished.

Some time later, a fight took place at the local Payless - from what I heard, a bunch of white students who happened to prefer a certain clothing style and trucks ("Hicks"), were attacked by a bunch of black students for no apparent reason other than that they were "hicks". Whether this is true or not, the reaction of the HOS students was surprising.

"Those hicks really got what was coming to them!" one student said.

Most of the rest agreed. "Yeah!"

I don't remember what I said to them as I left, but I dropped the class that morning.

I considered starting The Plug again. By this time, there were only two months or so left in the school year. I never got around to it.

My sister, Lori McKee, decided that she wanted to "carry the torch", so I helped her put together one issue around the end of her Freshman year. It didn't catch on - but she tried again, and issues of The Plug have been coming out once every two weeks since the start of the 1997 - 1998 school year.

So, that's a brief overview of The Plug, and as far as I know, this is the first time it has actually been written down.