Daria and Mr. Lamm in “Unfinished Business”

Daria

You're planning to make soda companies bid against each other for the right to market their products in Lawndale High?

That's right. All you kids have to do is what you'd do anyway: drink soda.

Daria

Does that mean that everywhere I turn I'll run into a vending machine?

Well, there wouldn't be much value to the contract if the product weren't easily available. [chuckles]

Daria

And what else?

Nothing but a few small discreet advertising posters in the halls. Nothing in questionable taste. And, if we're lucky, an exciting new high-tech scoreboard for athletic events, boys' and girls'.

Daria

So the school will, in effect, be endorsing the soda? Is that really the school's role, to become a shill?

Miss... do you drink soda?

Daria

Huh? Of course.

So?

Daria

This isn't about whether I like soda. It's about whether a public high school should be using its status as a place of authority to serve as one more marketing tentacle of corporate America. With the taxpayers subsidizing it.

Surely you give your friends enough credit to know when they're being taught and when they're being sold to?

Daria

I give them enough credit to figure out about three seconds after those machines arrive that they can't trust this institution. The few who still do.