This paper explores some of the more disturbing aspects of research on what was, at the time, the only state-funded alternative secondary school in New Zealand. Throughout the five years of research, New Zealand's school inspectorate, the Education Review Office, publicly released a series of highly critical reports on the school which resulted in it being closed down. The paper discusses some of the theoretical, political, and ethical implications of doing a "post-structural ethnography" under these circumstances. It raises questions about the methodological tension between an ethnographic approach, which identifies the site of struggles as the school and government educational authorities, and a post-structural approach, which re-orientates the site of struggles towards the narratives of the school and educational authorities themselves, seeking to disrupt them. (Contains 5 notes.)