Principal Snyder
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| Principal Snyder | ||||||||||||||
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 Armin Shimerman as Principal Snyder |
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Principal Snyder is a fictional character in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, played by Armin Shimerman.
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[edit] Summary
After Robert Flutie was eaten alive by "the Pack" (sans Xander), Snyder replaced him as the principal of Sunnydale High. A strict disciplinarian with a dictator-like personality, he made no friends among the Scooby Gang, or any other student for that matter, with the sole exception being the Swim Team. Snyder strongly disliked Buffy and sought any excuse he could find to expel her. He coerced students into serving as chaperones for young children on Halloween, bullied Willow into tutoring Percy and giving a passing grade to a swim team member that was failing computer class and forced everyone to sell candy for the marching band.
Snyder, along with Police Chief Bob Munroe, turned out to be one of the many people Mayor Richard Wilkins had put in place to cover up supernatural activities in Sunnydale ("School Hard", "I Only Have Eyes For You") -- a troubling sign for the Californian town.
Snyder finally expelled Buffy when she was found beside Kendra's body in the season two finale. He refused to allow her to return even after Buffy was cleared of all charges, an act that gave him "tingling" pleasure. However, the school board and some physical pressure from Rupert Giles forced him to change his mind.
His stern belief in imposing order and discipline proved to be his undoing, as Snyder was swallowed whole in the season three finale, "Graduation Day". Before being eaten, he had loudly scolded Mayor Wilkins for turning into the gigantic, snakelike demon Olvikan following his keynote speech at the 1999 high school graduation.
Snyder made one more appearance in the role of Colonel Kurtz in Xander's Apocalypse Now-themed dream in the season four finale "Restless".
[edit] Quotes
- "A lot of educators tell students, 'Think of your principal as your pal'. I say 'Think of me as your judge, jury and executioner'." ("School Hard")
- "Why couldn't you have been dealing drugs like normal people?" ("Choices")
- "One day the campus is completely bare and empty. The next, there are children everywhere. Like locusts. Crawling around, mindlessly bent on feeding and mating. Destroying everything in sight in their relentless, pointless desire to exist." ("When She Was Bad")
- "It's that kind of woolly-headed liberal thinking that leads to getting eaten." ("The Puppet Show")
- "I walked by your guidance counselor's office one time. A bunch of you were sitting there, waiting to be shepherded. I remember it smelled like dead flowers. Like decay. Then it hit me. The hope of our nation's future is a bunch of mulch." ("Restless")
[edit] Trivia
- Principal Snyder is named in honour of George Snyder, Joss Whedon's personal assistant at the time.
- On several occasions in the series you can clearly see on the name-tag on his desk that the first letter of his first name is 'R', although his full name is never revealed in the series.
