The War With Mr. Wizzle - Plot

Plot

Macdonald Hall starts off the year in a fix due to a new dress code, and Bruno, Boots, and the rest of the ensemble soon find out that a new assistant, Walter C. Wizzle, is instituting the new functions. He institutes a dress code, a demerit system, schedules psychological tests for the students, and worst of all, calls the institute in danger of becoming 'a dinosaur' and starts installing a new software program called Wizzleware (that he wrote himself) to handle all office, school, and teaching functions. The school atmosphere becomes strict and restricted for everyone, including the teachers, staff, and Headmaster Sturgeon. The only person not standing for it is Bruno Walton, who starts up a committee against Wizzle and his functions, and with the gradual help of other students comes up of ways to remove Wizzle from the school. They write a Free Press newspaper, exchange his anticipated printer paper with toilet paper and napkins, and work at night in the gym building a large comic Wizzle balloon. With the help of genius Elmer Drimsdale and a device he created (along with a convincing presentation supporting the "fact" that Wizzle's guest cottage is along a fault line), they give Wizzle earthquakes at night.

But the problems aren't only at Macdonald Hall - across the road at Scrimmage's Finishing School for Young Ladies, Ms. Scrimmage hires a new assistant for herself, Ms. Peabody, who is from the Marines. She turns the school into an army camp with her strict physical training exercises and morning calisthenics.

Both schools have their share of problems and both have their own number of counter-attacks on the assistants. Eventually, Sturgeon, who loathes Wizzle himself, realizes what his students are doing and orders them to stop the harassment and disband the committee, even while he refuses Wizzle's advise to have Bruno expelled for his disrespectful behaviour (although the assistant is unaware of the true scope of the boy's resistance). However, Bruno and Cathy, from Scrimmage's, joining their forces as The Coalition, get the idea to marry the two assistants off. Through romantic talking and dinners they actually manage to get them married, and the two schools turn back to normal.

However, Sturgeon, although pleased at the departure of Wizzle, takes a firm hand at his students' flouting his prohibition of the resistance. He institutes a new school rule forbidding the formation of any student organizations without the approval and participation of the faculty and creates a new committee to order Bruno and his upper echelon comrades in The Committee to wash dishes for a few months as punishment.