My high school was an odd one. Among the oddities was the split between “Upper Division” and “Lower Division” that occurred starting in the second year of the school’s existence (my sophomore year).
At the time of the school’s formation, it consisted of 100 freshmen and 50 sophomores, who all took classes together. The last 40% of the one-building school was a giant, almost completely open computer lab called the Great Room; it had 200 then-state-of-the-art computers in it, and it was split in half by a hallway running straight through the middle, and then split in half again by ~5-ft-high partitions that ran perpendicular to the hallway. This will become important later. Anyway, according to the new plan–spearheaded by a new physics teacher/old PhD buddy of the principal–the Upper Division and Lower Division kids would take separate classes; (the 50) juniors would automatically become Upper Division students, and the (100) sophomores all had the option of applying for “admission” to what we shall henceforth call the UD. Otherwise the sophs would be in LD by default.
This was initially of no great interest to me, as I wasn’t particularly fond of any of the UD teachers or the classes offered. I didn’t apply and I didn’t much care. But as the idea of the UD/LD split developed, it began to pique my curiosity as an oddity.
Then the next school year came around; now there were 100 freshmen, 100 sophomores and 50 juniors, and the split came into effect. I don’t remember the exact number, but about 20-30 sophomores were in the Upper Division and were now taking classes with the juniors. The whole project’s masturbatory nature suddenly became evident when the aforementioned physics teacher claimed an entire half of the Great Room as exclusive UD territory–meaning that under 80 students had 100 computers to themselves and over 170 students had to fight over the other 100. Needless to say, this did not fly in the LD, and we openly defied his authority. He was headstrong, though, and he issued a series of warnings to the entire school; “UD, don’t let the LD in to your side; and LD, don’t go over to the other side”. The open defiance continued, of course, so the physics teacher decided to play hardball: he made a barrier out of white construction paper that went from the top of the hallway wall to the ceiling on the UD side, so that the UD kids couldn’t see out and the LD kids couldn’t see in.
Well, the UD kids and the freshmen were pretty apathetic about the whole thing, but us LD sophomores had a revolutionary streak and the construction of the barrier was our defining moment, our cue to kick the fight into high gear. A group of us hatched a devious plan the day the barrier went up, and the next morning it went into effect: we stole as many magic markers from vacant classrooms, unguarded utility closets and offices, unwatched desks, etc. as we could, ditched our first-period classes and stormed the Great Room in shifts to write exactly what we thought of these developments, all over the makeshift wall. We dubbed it the Berlin Wall. Once word spread, more and more people started grabbing markers and voicing their dissent. Eventually the Berlin Wall was nearly covered in “graffiti”, ranging from the mundane (“Laurel is a bitch”) to the pointless (“I Heart Pancakes”) to the Stuff We Must Share–the anger and resentment we felt towards our disenfranchisement. As the students became emboldened in their anonymity and empowered in their new medium, the teachers gradually began to both value the unprecedented honest feedback and heed the student voice.
I like to think we knocked that physics teacher down a peg that term. He gradually became less totalitarian as the Berlin Wall meme grew, and after a few weeks of glorious free speech the Wall finally came down as he conceded some of our points and relaxed the restrictions he’d imposed. Paradoxically, the same Wall that was erected to divide us became a means of unifying the student body, and eventually unifying the entire school as teachers began to implore the kids to express themselves further. LD teachers started their lectures by reading off their favorite lines from the Berlin Wall, and there were even a couple of improvised lectures based completely on the development of the Wall concept. And when it came down, the event symbolized both the restoration of harmony and unity, and the destruction of the means of the revolution.
It was an exciting time to go to that school, which is much less free-wheeling and more set in its ways now that it’s almost seven years old. We learned a lot about ourselves and each other; we learned about the importance of free speech; we learned how to assert ourselves to achieve compromise; but most of all, we had a blast. We felt powerful, defiant, adult when we wrote our poems of resistance on the Wall. And that was perhaps our biggest triumph of all.
It was also neither the first nor the last example of our revolutionary nature, but I have a class in four and a half hours and I need some sleep. The story of the Great Shoe Revolt (or The Ballad of the Revolting Shoes) will have to be told another day. Good night and good luck.
