Angela Li: Difference between revisions

Principal Angela Li was head educator at [[Lawndale High]] during the show's five-year run. She never spoke the name "Lawndale High" without affecting a tone of awe and reverence. The character was often portrayed as a self-righteous, iron-fisted tyrant who had very little respect for her students and was constantly using school funds to purchase elaborate security equipment - 80% of the operating budget by [[The Daria Database|her own admission]]. Indeed, Angela Li has been seen as many as being a parody of school officials who, in the late 1990s, were obsessed with fear of school shootings and compensated with over-the-top security measures (this despite the show's airing before the Columbine High School shootings). Bomb-sniffer dogs, urine tests, and fingerprinting are established facts of life at Lawndale High. In 2001 she created the Track-Tastic system "which comprehensively cross-references confidential student information, local law-enforcement files, and multiple consumer-spending databases, all while continuously monitoring e-Bay for stun-gun auctions". [http://web.archive.org/web/20010809094531/www.mtv.com/mtv/tubescan/animation/daria/lhs/greeting.html]

Despite her obsession with school security when it comes to crime and disorder, Ms Li is completely willing to ignore lack of safety over maintenance issues ("[[Fair Enough]]"); and she's annoyed that [[Helen Morgendorffer]] reveals [[Ken Edwards]] a substitute teacher was sexually harrassing students, as this means she's in "a fix" by having to find a new teacher. She is also unconcerned with any damage done to the school's ability to educate by her actions or penny-pinching, in "[[Fizz Ed]]" only being bothered by the budget squeeze when it affected the football team.

When it comes to paying wages or employee benefits, Li is monstrously tight-fisted. She is also known for extreme corruption, and not only allows sports players to have their grades fixed but is actively involved in pressuring teachers to do it ("[[See Jane Run]]", "[[Mart of Darkness]]").

A running gag in the series was the vast amount of money spent by Ms. Li out of the school budget, often without even telling the other teachers. In one second season episode, Li spent the entire budget the school had set aside for building repairs on a top of the line polygraph machine, explaining that she had won it in a raffle. To deal with her inability to handle the budget for her school, Li would constantly force the students of Lawndale High to participate in forced fund-raising schemes of varying moral quality and enact rules calling for all mandatory attendance of all school events that charged admission prices with suspension as penalty for non-attendance. Li also was not above exploiting the school itself in order to make a quick buck, by allowing companies to recruit students via workshop classes or going into business with vending machine companies that flooded the school with advertisements for soft drinks. In the latter case, a combination of too much soda and too much pressure caused her to run amok in the school with a fire axe, chopping up vending machines. She was dragged to hospital but later released: ''how'' she was released is unknown.