A member of the faculty, who for the sake of context will remain anonymous, mentioned to a Clarion staff member that Cleveland has reached a sort of “golden age.”

The golden age of Cleveland. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? But what does it really mean? It seems that if we were actually in a golden age, there would be some stand-out characteristics and blinking signs letting us know what the reasons were for being in said time of utmost prosperity.

Let’s see…we all know that it would be a whole lot better if this school were made of cheddar cheese. Then it would be gold and aged. One of the school colors is gold, and presumably has been for an age of some sort. Going by these ridiculous standards, either the school will never be in a golden age (the school is not going to turn into cheese, obviously. Come on, guys.), or has been in one continuously since getting assigned its colors. Logically-minded people such as ourselves know that neither of these can be the cause of our school’s golden age. It has to be something else, if it exists at all.

Is it statistics that determine when a school is in a golden age? It is true that right now, our school is doing remarkably well in terms of test scores, ratings and not leaving any children behind. For the first time ever, Cleveland passed enough discipline, test score and program benchmarks to make the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standard. The number of students enrolling here each year is hitting the ceiling, with 1526 this year; every out-of-district kid that knows what “transfer” means is trying to do so. Our football team’s number of wins still has room for improvement, but hey, at least they’ve got spirit. There appear to be more people in the hallways smiling than there are crying. We haven’t had one shooting—the closest thing we’ve had was last year’s Motel 6 lockdown incident. The situation looks pretty good.

What about the overall feel-good vibes emanating from every gleaming tooth in the smiles of our faculty members? They’re always trying to make this school a better place. Is what makes a golden age really so simple as facts, or can the cause be traced to something like the overall level of positivity and hope that wanders around the campus? Positivity and hope cannot help but follow learning and pep assemblies.

We can be sure that a golden age for anything is nearly impossible to define until that thing has long since passed on to a better place. While Cleveland still exists, pinpointing its golden age is not an accomplishable task. In order to do this, we would need to be able to look back on Cleveland many years after its disappearance with a large array of primary source, historical documents at our disposal, and then see where Cleveland’s greatest concentration of greatness lay.

But we cannot do that because, as you can plainly see, Cleveland still exists. All we can do is look around, observe, and form our own opinions as to how golden this school seems to us. The only label we can give the school is a personal one, one based on each individual’s definition of what characterizes a golden age. For the kid who gets his milk money bullied out of him every day, to say that Cleveland is in a golden age would be a cruel joke. On the other hand, for the remarkably undaunted Jan Watt, Cleveland will probably forever retain the color and flavor of a large, glistening pineapple.

Is Cleveland in its golden age? It’s safe to say that it sure ain’t doin’ too darn bad.