didja have that moment in 7th grade on the first day of school when the teacher said 'papers written in pencil will NOT be accepted,' and it totally blew your mind because all through elementary school you had learned to write papers only in pencil so that you could fix your mistakes and now being told that you had to write in pen meant that mistakes would be permanent, there would be no erasing (unless you got erasable pens, which was cheating and sucked) and that from this point forward you had to be certain of your stokes? it was a major paradigm shift into adulthood and puberty and random boners in the middle of class and finding out that the other boys are waay more interested in the girls than you are. didja?
Making students write in pen is just a way of controling their students. I would love to tell my 6th grade students that "now that you are in middle school you need to write with pen, and when I say your name stand on one leg and bark." The only reason I would do that is because I can, and it would be really funny.
Too bad Boulder kids are already fucked up.