High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! W. Seymour Skinner (born Armin Tamzarian) is a fictional character in the American animated sitcom The Simpsons. He is voiced by Harry Shearer. Born in Capitol City, he is the principal of Springfield Elementary School. He struggles to control the crumbling school and is constantly engaged in a battle against its inadequate resources, apathetic and bitter teachers, and often rowdy and unenthusiastic students, Bart Simpson being a standout example. A strict disciplinarian, Skinner has an uptight, militaristic attitude that stems from a combination of being trapped for three or four days in a swimming pool full of earthworms and his years in the United States Army as a Green Beret, which included service in the Vietnam War, in which he was captured by the Viet Cong and was held as a war prisoner for eighteen months. Skinner is also quite bitter about the treatment he and other Vietnam veterans received upon returning from the war.