This article is 6 years old

Opinion

Admin Consent Impedes Student Activism

Many celebrated when, on September 15, Berkeley High School (BHS) students walked out of class over the Trump administration’s ending of DACA. The BHS administration has sponsored walkouts and protests like this one since 2014. While the goals of these protests were good, there are serious problems because they were actively supported by the school administration.

First of all, walkouts are unfair to students who are moderate, conservative, or simply do not care about politics. Although conservatives are often thought of as non-existent at BHS, they form a significant group of the population.Students tend to be more left-leaning than other age groups, but it cannot be denied that some students at BHS are conservative.

Classes are severely disrupted by these walkouts, with teachers not even bothering to teach the few students who are in class. While students attending the walkouts know the harms of missing a day of class, those who stay behind are unfairly punished for a decision they didn’t make.

Students can walk out if they want to, but the job of the administration is to educate, not to make a political statement. They should not spend school resources on a protest which denies many students their right to education.

Many argue that these protests are actually defending education by supporting undocumented students who are worried about the threat of deportation, or people of color who feel unsafe on campus. These concerns are valid, but is shutting down the school for a whole period the best way to address them?

A better way would be to offer improved counseling services for those victimized, or to hold a school-wide expression of support that does not detract from class time. These could have an equally powerful effect of reassuring undocumented students without the problems of a school-wide walkout. Using these walkouts to soothe student fears of deportation and combat racism is a blunt and counterproductive solution that harms much more than it helps.

Endorsement from the BHS administration can actually harm protests. A major goal of a protest is to show that a community opposes the policy being protested. This is shown best when it is clear that the community is leading the protest, as opposed to activists and politicians. As much good as the BHS administration does, they are not part of the BHS community, or at least not compared to the student body.

If protests were lead and organized by students they would be seen as stronger, more powerful, and more community-driven. Instead, many see them as groups of students without direction, who just want an excuse to get out of class. This makes protests unable to inspire action, and discredits real, community-based activists by making activism in general look less serious and more like the work of disorganized teens.

It is also counterproductive to the other goal of the protests, which is to make BHS safer for students who feel threatened by deportation and racism.

Seeing one hundred students who firmly believe in equality and are willing to walk out unsupported by the administration is more powerful than seeing one thousand who want an excuse to cut class.

While these walkouts have the admirable goal of supporting important social justice causes, endorsement from BHS administration hurts their efforts.

It makes the protest look less authoritative and less trustworthy by attracting students who want to get out of class rather than committed activists.