What happened in your town?
Yesterday, a month after the Parkman shootings, all four of the Middle and High Schools here observed 17 minutes of silence and then marched to the local courthouse.
Their 17 year old spokesman said
A school spokesperson said “Our students are emerging as leaders for the next generation, and the nation should watch carefully to see what the future demands.”
I am proud of these kids.
Moved from Great Debates to MPSIMS.
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I chose GD based on other threads on the subject, but yeah, no real debate in the OP.
The middle schools and high schools here did something similar here, with no march to the town hall. They also organized discussions on civics, what next steps could be from here, more education on various pieces of this whole big puzzle (like the role of marches in political participation, community engagement, what type of gun control would work in Oregon, the impact of gun violence). My kids are middle school level. The groups seems quiet but determined.
Administrative support at the school seemed to vary, although it clearly came from the same district. Some of the schools organized quite a bit more, with support, than others. Some were discouraged, but the students went ahead any way.
I’m proud of all of them.
We’re in Northwest Oregon. South of Salem and just east of OSU. We’re an interesting mixture of red and blue, due to the intermingling of urban, college, and rural/farming influences.
The middle and high schools all had walk outs in my (Conservative, gun-loving rural) area. Which gave me hope for the future.
A friend on FB posted a picture from an elementary school where an 11 year old had put together press kits-- a folder with hand-written info about their walkout. On the front of the folder, in messy little-kid handwriting, it said “George Mason Elementary.” When I saw that, my heart was simultaneously broken and filled with pride.
Our high school had a walk-out, but the kids assembled in the gym, for safety. From the looks of it, there weren’t too many kids.
The superintendent and principal made it clear that the administration and teachers didn’t do anything to organize the event, it was all done by the kids. But they supported the efforts.
Of course some kids decided to spread a rumor that there’d be a shooting at the event, and people went nuts, and kids got scared and a lot of kids didn’t go to school at all.
There were many parents online saying they threatened their kids to not even think about leaving their classrooms for this “nonsense.”
There were a LOT of adults online bitching and moaning about how the kids were missing 17 crucial minutes of learning time. When I asked them if they supported pep rallies, which take the kids away for much longer than 17 minutes, they changed their tunes (not to support but bitching about something else).
I am super super super proud of the kids who are standing up. But I am mortified at the reaction of many of their parents/people their parents’ age/people my age. I thought we were better than this. I was wrong.
I live in a purple area, fwiw.
It looks (from local news) as though multiple schools had walkouts in my area.
My district left a voicemail a week or two back saying that the walkout was not authorized and the students would get detention. They gave some lame thing about how, since the walkouts were so well publicized, what if Stranger Danger lurked in the bushes outside school and grabbed kids as they passed by? Because, you know, it’s impossible to predict when a shitload of kids might be exiting a high school every day…
If my oldest was still in high school and wanted to walkout, he wouldn’t have gotten any flack from me although I’d expect him to serve his detention. I don’t need no rebels asking me to bail them out of the consequences. My younger one (who is in the district, hence the call) is in 1st grade so he obviously wasn’t going anywhere.
My kids’ high school was closed yesterday due to snow. They’ve moved the walkout to Friday. They have tepid support from the administration - the principal supports it, the superintendent is tolerating it. Both of my daughters will be speaking at the event. Words cannot express my pride.
I’m with Lewis Black, “The Kids Are Marching”.
Why didn’t “they” arrange for the students to protest on a Saturday? Now it looks as if the students wanted a day away from school.
Portland had a city-wide walkout. We supported the one at our local elementary school, where some of our neighbor’s kids go.
Do you have kids? Did you actually listen to any kids, or are you just projecting your own thoughts onto them?
I can assure you that my kids were marching to express their hope that we adults will take action on guns in this country, not because they wanted 17 minutes off from school.
In the New Orleans area, nothing that I heard.
It was exactly a month after the 17 deaths in Florida.
I’m sure the kids appreciate your “concern”.
Some high schools in a neighboring district had thousands of students walk out. My redneck school had a lesser turn-out. But still, several hundred met at the flagpole of a 17 minute observation. District administration was officially neutral, but there were no threats made about detentions or anything like that.
My guess as to why the administration “supported but made it clear that it didn’t organize” it was, somebody felt that if the administration made it an “official” thing, then they, and not the students, would get the credit for it, which would defeat the whole purpose of the walkout in the first place.
There is a nationwide “March for Our Lives” scheduled for next Saturday (March 24). There may also be something on Friday, April 20 (no 4/20 jokes, please), which is the anniversary of the Columbine shooting.
Once colleges started coming out and noting that disciplinary action because of civil protests would actually be a net positive for your application, it was kind of moot to do so.
I don’t have any school-age children, but a co-worker of mine brought her teenage daughter to our company lunch. She had apparently walked out of the walkout because she didn’t like the anti-gun tone of it. That’s in Utah.
Hey, who am I to suggest people can’t somehow LIKE being moving targets for anyone who can sign their name to a sales slip? Go her.