With the support of both my school ASB and the California state legislature (Who took a paid holiday today), the immigration protests have certainly gained some attention in the past couple of weeks. As I headed to school this morning, I was half expecting expecting to see the school relatively empty and to be the only one attending classes today. I was wrong.
My school (with all 300 people enrolled) had a normal day, possibly because of the standardized tests going on this week. The only talk I heard of somebody actually ‘walking out’ came from two people in my grade who were simply taking an opportunity to ditch school. It seemed that the posters promoting the demonstration had been put up in vain.
When I first saw the posters around the school last week, I didn’t think much of them. My school celebrates the diverse student body that it has. I just assumed that a small group of politically motivated students had finally found their voice. Then I took a closer look at the posters and read something that shocked me. The bottom of the posters read, “If you have any questions, ask an ASB officer.”
Isn’t the ASB supposed to be a liaison between students and staff? Why would they sanction a movement that deprives the school of funding? It is sending a message from the staff to the students that it is okay to skip school, even on a week filled with testing.
My school does not really follow the rules when it comes to protests, however. Breaking the rules seems to be fine if you have a political message and have a staff member backing you.
For instance, on April 26th was the Day of Silence sponsored by the school’s Gay Straight Alliance. I was perfectly fine with the fact that some students had chosen to be silent in protest discomfort faced by many gays and lesbians about coming out about their sexuality in their own community. What bugged me, however, was that in first period, we were read a statement of beliefs of sorts (Does that break the silence?). Furthermore, many of the people protesting were allowed to break the schools dress code simply because the clothes were “given to them by a teacher.”
Back on the subject of the immigration demonstration, I decided to take the advice given on the posters and ask an ASB officer about the demonstration and, more particularly, why they had chosen to support it. I got some weird explanation of HR 4437 and how, even I, was an immigrant. I asked why the ASB would want the school to lose it’s precious money and he said it wasn’t about the money but rather that Mexican rights are more important than school.
I continued to ask about it over the next couple days and kept getting weird answers. Today there was not much talk at school about walking out. At lunch the jokes were sort of centered around “Are you going to leave?” Nobody was serious. For representing such a diverse crowd living so close to the border, nobody really took the protests seriously.
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