Middle school students in Medford, Oregon, were suspended for cutting class to participate in an anti-ICE protest.
The protest is OK. The discipline is OK.
I love it.
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| Rogue Valley Times news story |
It is almost spring in Medford, with sunny and clear afternoons in the 60s. Early trees are budding. Young people are restless.
Fifty years from now the students won't be reminiscing with former classmates about the problem sets in their algebra class. But many of them will remember the thrill of organizing a non-permitted, skip-school protest of the rough and misdirected policing by ICE. They will retain memories of the honking horns of cars on the street, and the trouble they got into.
They will remember it better thanks to having gotten in trouble.
For some, the protest was learning how to pitch an independent idea to classmates and to organize them. Perhaps different leaders emerged than those from school-approved activities like student body elections and athletic teams. Students got direct experience with the school's justice system for behavior the school found transgressive no matter how worthy the students believed the cause to be. It will be a good topic of discussion among them. Was it fair or unfair?
The event was not a simulation of life, a school project to prepare, get graded, and then discard. It wasn't a civics class about how a bill becomes law. It is a tiny bit of real life because it was outside of school and forbidden.
I am happy to see that this walkout protest was about protesting ICE. I suspect this protest will age well for them. Some of the people at risk of deportation will be their friends and the families of their friends.
I take enough pleasure in seeing political engagement by young people that I would even feel OK if I learned that young people were protesting in support of Kristi Noem: "Bring her back! Bring her back!" I would shudder, of course, about their choice of position, but I would appreciate their engagement with the broader world.
People with political power -- people more or less my age -- don't give up their power willingly. Their power is torn from their aged hands by the next generation, who don't ask for permission.
Like the tiny buds on plum tree branches at my farm, the protest is not a plan for beginning the next cycle. It is the beginning of the next cycle..
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3 comments:
"In the Medford Area Public School District (WI), suspensions can be appealed by demonstrating that the disciplinary action was arbitrary, capricious, or violated policy. Suspensions may occur for willful disobedience, disrupting education, or endangering others, with appeals focusing on reviewing evidence, proper procedure, and whether the suspension was justified"
I'd appeal.
Exercising their free speech rights while it still exists.
Due respect for not making the general rule a function of the specific application. The merits of participating in a principled walkout do not rise and fall with whether or not one agrees with the principle at issue.
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