Getting up early, as is my habit of late, I have noticed the sky grow darker each morning. Ah, autumn. Leaves will fall, clocks will fall back, and bees and wasps will fall into memory. Unfortunately, our small city suffers from an autumnal disease quite specific to this region, an infestation not unlike wasps.

While they sometimes sting, bees are generally cute and productive, bumbling around in their humble way, making honey and occasionally giving someone a little nip to remind us they're around.

But wasps are a different story altogether. Ugly, single-minded, and quite unable to get along with anyone else, wasps never manage to succeed in impressing anybody, except maybe each other. Wasps select a target, then make it their undistracted mission to make that target unhappy.. No honey, no cuteness, just a total lack of social skills. This can't be a survival tactic because our desire to kill them would likely fade in intensity were they not such jerks all the time. No, they're just sadistic freaks of nature, hated by all.

When the wasps of St. Albert fade away, they are replaced for a short (yet still too long) period time by another wave of creatures who can endure slightly harsher climates. These antisocial pests are a mutant strain that developed out of a friendlier, more relaxed specimen.

The parallel is quite striking between these two creatures and bees and wasps, except these creatures take on the guise of young human beings in high schools. The original, bee-like version of this creature used to, not so long ago, engage in a primitive ritual of teasing newcomers to their schools. The most common form of this initiation rite was throwing eggs. The contrast is evident in the film Dazed and Confused, in which this ritual took the form of bottom-whacking with a paddle, as well as such degrading actions as putting girls on leashes and covering people with disgusting substances. But in the film, paddler and paddlee, when all was said and paddled, enjoyed celebrating other, more congenial activities together.

Lately though, a less intelligent and more bizarre variety of this creature has emerged, one incapable of processing any train of thought not geared to hurt people. All fraternal joviality has been drained from the September routine.

Instead of getting to know one another, welcoming new students, or even reasserting the traditional grade-level school hierarchy, this creature has one goal: to cause pain. The timing of this creature's malice is almost purely arbitrary, so weak is its relation to the act of going back to school. Thus this creature's quest to hurt people can start as early as mid-August and begin to fade as late as early October. Everyone is fair game for this freakish sadistic cult. The old benign initiation bears no resemblance to this moronic need to the break the law.

Someone receiving an egg on the head is in no way comparable to a boy being jumped by six to ten larger boys, driven far beyond city limits, beaten, covered in filth and/or chemically robbed of his hair, and abandoned. This is assault and kidnapping and a flagrant violation of human rights. Only a moron with no idea how to function in this culture would do anything near to what has been done in the past few years.

So, as a community, we must ask the police to stop wasting their time and our money breaking up small rock concerts and to start harassing these tiresome immature freaks. Everyone must possess zero tolerance for the hazing crimes that are likely to be committed this September.

Fining the criminals won't work. A lot of them are rich, spoiled brats. They need to be put to work. If they're old enough, they need to be arrested. What they do is not harmless fun. It is hurtful, illegal, and humiliating to their victims, to themselves, and to our community.

So, just as we all enjoy using a fly-swatter to bring a swift end to the belligerent behaviour of wasps, let us rejoice as a community in putting a stop to the social perversion that plagues our high schools every fall.