Ken Dwight

"Don't you see, Rafe?! MY SCHOOL, MY RULES!!"

- Principal Dwight

Principal Kenneth "Ken" Dwight (simply known as Ken Dwight) is the main antagonist of the 2016 comedy film, Middle School: The Worst Years Of My Life. He was the former principal of Hills Village Middle School, and the archenemy of Rafe Khatchadorian.

He was portrayed by Andrew Daly of MADtv fame, who also portrayed Mayor Brown in Yogi Bear.

Personality
Principal Dwight was shown to be a cruel, greedy, selfish, ruthless, and manipulative man who likes making his students follow the rules. As the movie went on he was shown as a total hypocritical fascist with a huge ego for making the students follow the rules and goes on about how people should always follow the rules, but yet he never actually follows the rules himself, believing that since he's the principal he does not need to follow the rules.

Role in the film
He is the uncaring, tyrannical, and deceptive principal of Hills Village Middle School, who runs the school as if it were a prison. He is aided by his right-hand Vice Principal Ida Stricker, who is in alignment with his bullying tactics. He makes all of his students follow his code of conduct; it is filled with rules that are mostly unjustified and unlawful. A new student named Rafe Khatchadorian (the protagonist of the film) already gets on Dwight's bad side when he draws an insulting picture of Dwight as a blabbering zombie in his notebook during an assembly that gets seen by other students. As stated in the school's code of conduct, any reading material deemed inappropriate would be destroyed, so Dwight destroys Rafe's notebook containing all of Rafe's old drawings by dumping it into a bucket of acid, which totally devastates Rafe afterwards.

Upset by this, Rafe decides to get even by breaking the rules of Dwight's code of conduct in retaliation. During the time, Dwight notices that ever since the rule breaking started the test scores started slipping, so he tries to do whatever he can to find the culprit and punish him. Dwight tried to handle all the rule breaking, but after the trophy case was turned into an aquarium it drove him off the deep end, deciding to expand the rules. Dwight then notices that the students that have low test scores are from the remedial class, so Dwight plans on illegally cutting off the remedial class (led by Rafe's favorite teacher Mr. Teller) from the upcoming test called B.L.A.A.R., as he wants to improve the average test scores. To that end, he frames the students of the remedial class for the pranks before suspending them. An outraged Mr. Teller objects to this by stating that this is a setup, but this only leads Dwight to personally fire Mr. Teller after falsely speculating that he may be involved with the pranks. Unwilling to let Mr. Teller and the remedial class take the fall, Rafe heads over to Dwight's office and confesses that he's the one responsible for the pranks. However, Dwight did not seem to care and he offers a deal with Rafe to uplift his suspension in exchange for his silence, but Rafe refuses and demands Dwight to un-suspend the students and give Mr. Teller his job back or he was "gonna make it rain". Rafe then sets off a false fire alarm to prove his point, but this resulted an angry Dwight to expel Rafe for his actions. Rafe's mom Jules is very upset at her son for getting kicked out of at least 3 schools and for not telling her that he had problems with Dwight. Jules's boyfriend Carl found a boarding school with some military aspects and Jules decides to send Rafe there since Hills Village Middle School was the last school that would accept Rafe, leaving Jules out of options.

Eventually, Rafe's girlfriend Jeanne Galletta found out that this whole turn of events was to cover up Dwight's actions of cutting off the remedial class from taking B.L.A.A.R. this whole time, having secretly recorded Dwight coercing the local janitor Gus into putting the evidence in the students' lockers to frame them for the pranks. Jeanne then points out the B.L.A.A.R. testing not only gives the school bragging rights, but it also gives Dwight a significant bonus if the scores are good enough, which is the main reason Dwight loves the B.L.A.A.R. so much. As such, the other suspended students agree to help Rafe expose Dwight's crimes, even Gus is willing to tag along as he's had enough of Dwight's behavior. The next day, as the entire school is about to take the B.L.A.A.R., Rafe and his classmates interrupted several procedures to expose Dwight's deceitfulness. Rafe tells all the students that Dwight is nothing but a hypocrite who likes to make the rules, but he thinks that since he's the Principal he's doesn't have to follow the rules himself. Finally fed up with Rafe's actions, Dwight begins to chase Rafe, only to be tripped by one of the students. With Stricker failing to catch Rafe as he jumps into cart with Gus and drives off, Dwight snatches a student's bike and tries to catch up to them. When Dwight finally catches up to them, Gus dumps a pile of manure on Dwight just as Mr. Teller arrives with the local superintendent Hwang, who received a formal complaint from Mr. Teller about the events. Dwight tries to deny everything by stating that Rafe is a dumb jerk and that nobody cares what Mr. Teller thinks, but Hwang isn't fooled by this. Rafe proceeds to present Hwang with the tape exposing Dwight and Stricker's crimes, resulting both Dwight and Stricker to be fired.

Dwight is last seen packing up his things as Hwang demands him to leave the school with Stricker. Dwight demands for a full hearing, to which Hwang assures that he'll have it in court as she plans to have him and Stricker prosecuted for their crimes. Rafe is welcomed back into the school and praised as a hero for exposing Dwight's true colors, and it's implied that Dwight will face a sentence in prison along with Stricker for their crimes.

Quotes
"Son, as principal, I think of myself as the father of this school, and there is nothing I wouldn't do to protect a child. Do you follow me? (Rafe: Sure, yeah you think the students are your children.) What? No. The students aren't my children, the school is my child, and you attacked my child today. You punched it in the face. What kind of person punches a child in he face? That was a really important assembly and you ruined it."

- Dwight explaining Rafe as how he thinks of himself as principal of the school.

"Listen, man. I am totally into creativity. I really dig it. I'm a hip-cat from way back, you better believe it. But it doesn't belong in school. Art should be locked up in a museum where old people can enjoy or children on field trips. (Rafe: We get to go on field trips to art museums?) God no, that's a complete waste of time. We're not doing that. All right, rule #26. Read it out loud, please? (Rafe: Rule 26: "Any written material deemed inappropriate or offensive will be be confiscated and destroyed?") "And destroyed", very good, you're a good reader."

- Dwight telling Rafe about his sense of creativity and rule #26.

"What is this? What is this?! (Stricker: Oh wow!) Hey Gus? Gus! (Gus enters Dwight's office) (Gus : Who ever did this must be commited to their art.)"

- Dwight entering his office to find it covered in post-it notes.

"What the?! Fish?! Who would do this?! Gus, we have a situation in the lobby! Bring a net! (To the laughing students) Get to class!"

- Dwight when he sees the trophy case turn into an aquarium.

"Attention, falcons! As you know, some punks have declared war on your education. And your education, through me, is about to start fighting back! Their punky little pranks and stunts have distracted our students, damaged our reputation on the world wide web,endangered our number one status, and traumatized an eel. And so today, it stops. If these little vandals don't like playing by our old rules, well then i guess i'll have to come up with some new ones. Here comes some new rules! New Rule #137: No more going to the bathroom. The bathrooms will be locked from now on. You'll just have to hold it until you get home. I've never been wild about people using the bathroom here, and now its over. Violators will be forced to stay after school and clean the toilets. New Rule #138: There will be no after school activities. That bell rings, and you go straight home. You'll want to anyway, because you'll have to go to the bathroom pretty bad. I'll also be dissolving school government, something i should have done a long time ago. It's been a puppet regime all this time anyway. No debate, no speech, no clubs of anykind. (To Jeanne) Including the audio-visual club."

- Dwight after he is pushed off the deep end from Rafe's rule breaking.

"Well, look at this. Were one week out from the test, and i do not like the scores on this practice exam. 78% proficient in English and 76 in math. (Stricker: These are not winning scores.) I have been growing my number one bush for a decade, and i do not intend to trim it. Ever! (Dwight sees Mr Teller and his class outside pretending to be planets) see, there's the problem right there. The good kids are working their tails off, and these remedials are fooling around instead of memorizing studying. I wonder what would happen if we excluded Mr Teller's students from taking the test. (Dwight removes Mr Teller's class from the exam results on his laptop) Look at that! Wow. We jump right back up to number one. (Stricker: Too bad we can't stop them from taking the test.) Oh yeah. We could stop them from taking the test. Ida, i could kiss you! (Fart bell goes off) Hey, Gus! Would you fix that farting bell i want my ding-dong back!"

- Dwight planning to cut the remedial students from the test to improve the score.

"Well you know, Rafe. That evidence could be real, and I've seen the way those other kids treat you. We could just make them go away. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut, and you won't have to be suspended. Let them take the fall. This whole thing will be our little secret. We have a deal?"

- Dwight proposing an unfair deal (to no avail) to cover his plot after Rafe confesses his pranks to him.

"I have had just about ENOUGH OF YOU!!!"

- Dwight when Rafe shows up to stop the B.L.A.A.R, and reveal Dwight's true nature to everyone.

"Thought you could get away from me huh? (Rafe and Gus dump a pile of manure on Dwight) Oh, that's disgusting!"

- Dwight when he catches up to Rafe and Gus.

"I don't know what stinks more, your attitude or my suit. And that's saying something right there, because my suit is covered in poop. Nobody cares what you think anyways."

- Dwight confronting Rafe for dumping manure on his suit and Mr. Teller for bringing in Superintendent Hwang to the event.

"And the rules clearly state that I have the right to a FULL HEARING!! (Hwang: Rigging state tests is a serious offense. You're done here! I'll make sure you'll get your full hearing, Dwight, in a court of law!) Let's get outta here, Ida. (Stricker: Thought you never ask.)"

- Dwight facing dismissal after his crimes are exposed.

Trivia

 * Before illegally rigging the B.L.A.A.R. and unlawfully firing Mr Teller, Dwight was already breaking the law with his rules. Some of them were highly unlawful, like destroying note books and banning students from using the bathroom. It is highly illegal for a Principal to destroy a students personal belonging's and banning them from using the bathroom.
 * It is revealed in the movie's climax that Dwight takes spin class.
 * He likes the song "Can't touch this" by MC Hammer.
 * In the reoccurring cartoon-fantasy scenes, Dwight is portrayed as a zombie who constantly dances and yells out "BLAAR!"
 * In the book that the movie was originally based on, Dwight was very different from his movie counterpart, being a minor character with only a few short appearances, rather than being the main antagonist like in the movie. He didn't show an abusive tyrannical side like in the movie nor was he shown doing anything illegal or even dodgy, acting more or less like a normal school principal. He even sympathized with the Khatchadorians after learning about Leo's passing. Like many characters, Dwight's physical appearance is quite different in the books than it is in the movie, having a balding head and dark hair. He is also depicted by Rafe as "The Lizard King", instead of a zombie. As well as that, later on, he leaves the school and moves far away, while Stricker take his place as principal.
 * Dwight is similar to Principal Elliot T. Jindraike. They are both self-centered corrupted principals that are both the main antagonists and the enemies to the main protagonists. They also have both broken the law to achieve their goals but end up losing their jobs after being defeated by the main protagonists.
 * Dwight is also similar to Mr. Krupp from Captain Underpants as they are both mean principals who hate creativity and also hate the main protagonists. Unlike Mr. Krupp, Dwight loses his job as the principal after being exposed by his true colors.