Many of you, my fellow schoolmates, recently celebrated the 4/20 holiday. It seems like drugs and alcohol were quite prominent on the hill that day, so as the self proclaimed “straight-edge-but-still-a-cool-duder” of this campus, I’d like to use this forum that has been offered to me to tell you why its cool to be straight.

I don’t need drugs or alcohol to get down. I have an awesome time just sitting on the hill, strumming away at my guitar alone, thinking about life, and sipping on a vitamin water. And unlike some of you, I don’t put vodka in that vitamin water. That would make it unhealthy, and I’m all about the health. In fact, you could call music and health my anti-drug.

Sometimes when I’m playing my guitar or listening to the Beatles, I almost feel like I could be on drugs. I go into this crazy trance where the world doesn’t seem to matter anymore. It’s just me and the music getting down, dancing together like two kids in love at a high school dance. There is no me or the musi—e merge into a cyclone of awesomeness.

I don’t need drugs for this. Hell, I don’t even need friends. When it’s just me and my music, I feel just fine.

Plus, I do so well in school. You could go homework another anti-drug of mine. Sometimes homework is like music for me. I just get caught up reading French Revolutionary history and I’ll look at my watch and be like “whoa, I can’t believe three hours have past.” They just fly by. Plus, there are enough books that I’ll never run out, as opposed to drugs which I hear you can build up a tolerance to. Once, some kids in tie dye shirts walked by me and I heard them talking about this problem. They were on the way to Foss Hill and looked they were on drugs, but it didn’t seem that great anyway. Especially when compared to music and books.

So in conclusion, I urge you all to try out being straight edge like me. I think you’ll find that being straight is way better than the alternatives. See you out on the hill. I’ll be the guy with the guitar having an awesome chemical-free time. Rock-on.