In a nutshell, after enduring months to years of tuition hikes, lowering education quality, and numerous other injustices, especially in California where the state’s financial troubles have really hit hard lately, the students have had enough and are speaking out. They are marching. They are occupying campus buildings and offices. They are blocking highways.
Students from coast to coast are feeling their power today. They are envisioning themselves as part of a movement, many for the first time. The next few hours will no doubt be very interesting, but I expect that the days and weeks that follow will be too.
Check out some more of today’s posts on Student Activism for more info, as well as following SA on Twitter and to see the #March4 Twitter feed for more information. It’s amazing! (more…)
My law professor said something today that resonated with me.He said:
You only possess the rights that you assert.
In other words, liberty is no longer (if it ever truly was) the default in our society.
In a nation that ever increasingly exhibits aspects characteristic of a police state, in the era of the PATRIOT Act, it is more important than ever that citizens of all ages actively engage themselves in the protection of their fundamental rights.
Young people are especially vulnerable to constitutional rights violations, as many of us believe that we lack the clout or resources necessary to fight back.This mentality stymies the youth rights movement, and is as incorrect as it is dangerous.True, young people lack some of the traditional indicators of social power, such as substantial financial means, and, in the case of those under eighteen, the right to vote.But lack of cash-on-hand and even the lack of the right to cast a ballot do not render youth powerless.Youth have significant power indeed, if channeled correctly.
Every person, young or old, rich or poor, has a voice—the ability to speak out.The question is: do we use it?
Merely complaining about an issue, as many who claim to be a part of the youth rights movement do, is at the very best unproductive, and at the worst destructive to the cause.We must do more than complain.
Simply writing a letter about an issue, or timidly discussing a rights violation, while certainly more constructive than complaining, still doesn’t fit the bill.We must do more than hide behind paper and social convention.
We must speak.
But is one person’s voice enough?The answer is almost always no.We must speak as a group—a unified force.In order to do this, we must find like-minded individuals to rally around us.For, certainly, the voice of one hundred is greater than the voice of one.
And so I call upon young people everywhere to unite for the cause of equality.Turn complaints into campaigns, and mobilize whatever resources that may be at your disposal.Form a group you can rely upon, a group sizable enough to attract attention, and make yourselves heard as a unit.This is the single most powerful way to effect change, whether the forum be a school, a city, a state, a nation, or the world.Unite as many, yet speak as one—this is my charge to you, readers.
If you don’t like a school policy, advocate against it with the full force of the student body.If the police in your city are harassing young people, remind the mayor that his job depends on the satisfaction of his constituents, or future constituents as the case may be.If a law discriminates against youth, fight it as a collective voice, all the way to the courts if necessary.
Do these things, and you will find yourself a formidable change agent in a world that worships the status quo.As my law professor so wisely stated:
You only possess the rights that you assert.
So go assert them, together with as many allies as you can attain.
I used to direct an after-school program, which was housed in a public school classroom, and I tried to implement a democratic meeting with my middle school students (a diverse group in terms of race and family income). As well-intentioned as I was, the students didn’t respect me as a leader because I was offering them decision-making power. They seemed so used to an authoritarian school day that they didn’t know what to do with an unexpected dose of freedom. It was also just a drop in the bucket compared to the way they spent the majority of their time. How would you have handled this situation?
- Redwood City, CA
Jonah Canner responded to the above scenario with an excellent post about how we are all democratic by nature, even little kids respond to each other democratically while playing, and it is school that imposes an authoritarian structure upon us. The following years stuck in school become a long, tired battle between authority and resistance to it. With all the harm that school does it is hard to reverse it over night, it is hard also to avoid getting caught in the crossfire of that ongoing battle of authority and resistance. Especially when you don’t seem to fit easily into expected roles. I definitely encourage you to click the link and read the post. It was an insightful response. (more…)
Little or no grammar teaching, cellphone texting, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, all are being blamed for an increasingly unacceptable number of post-secondary students who can’t write properly.
It’s perfectly possible to know and use both informal textspeak and proper English. Anyone who thinks otherwise simply hasn’t tried.
For years there’s been a flood of anecdotal complaints from professors about what they say is the wretched state of English grammar coming from some of their students.
Many anecdotes do not good evidence make.
Now there seems to be some solid evidence.
Ah, good. You’re acknowledging that those anecdotes weren’t evidence. (more…)
Let’s say you have two middle school girls, whom we’ll call JC and CC. They don’t like each other. JC then makes a video of herself and a few other girls calling CC names, and then this video appears on YouTube. Obviously, CC is very upset by this. Perhaps she could create a counter video saying nasty slanderous things about JC. Depending on the former video’s actual content, she may have a case for harassment. In any case, JC is the nasty one here, given what is known anyway. That said… how in the hell is this case any of their school’s business?
The facts in this case arose when J.C., an eighth grade girl, videotaped a group of her friends “talkin’ smack” about their classmate C.C. The video featured this group of kids saying that C.C. was spoiled, and a slut. J.C. then when home and uploaded the video to YouTube, and informed several classmates, including C.C., of the video’s existence.
The next day, C.C. and her mother informed the school of the video’s existence. C.C. also met with a school counselor for no more than half a class period to discuss how she felt humiliated by the video.
School administrators, upon viewing the video, called J.C. out of class, and made her write a statement about the video. The administrators also demanded that J.C. delete the video from YouTube. Upon consultation with the school district’s lawyer, the principal suspended J.C. for two days.
J.C. sued the school district, arguing that the school had violated her First Amendment rights and did not have the authority to discipline her over a video made and viewed off campus.
Having been a victim of middle school bullying myself, I do feel very much for CC’s plight, but then again, I do have to side with JC here in that the school is majorly overstepping its bounds on this issue. YouTube is not under the jurisdiction of Beverly Vista School or any other school district, nor are the private lives and doings of students any of the school’s business. (more…)
One major issue with the high drinking age, paired with the high penalties of underage drinking, is that an underage drinker may be left in fear of seeking help in an emergency if he or she has had something to drink. This blog entry I read today highlights get another terrifying problem: sexual assault victims who are afraid to report the assault for fear that they’ll get arrested for underage drinking!
A few weeks back, I mentioned that a former student of mine had been hurt by an abusive boyfriend. The campus judicial hearing was last week. In it, the accuser had to face trial herself.
Here’s the problem: Underage drinking laws and the equivalent campus rules deter victims of violent crime from reporting. As I learned at the eleventh hour, after I’d already written my character reference and shown up for the hearing, my student also faced multiple charges against her! One of them was underage drinking. After the original incident, she’d been frank with the investigators and told them she’d had two beers much earlier in the day. This was used against her, with no corroborating evidence.
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My student’s problem is typical, I’m afraid. When dating violence and sexual assault occur on campus, alcohol is often part of the picture. Lots of assaults – sexual and otherwise – go unreported because the victims are afraid they’ll be punished for underage drinking. While this is a particularly pervasive problem on campus, it also potentially affects all women and girls who are underage.
This is just appalling! Are the people who keep insisting that the 21 drinking age is for safety really so blind to these horrible consequences? In their (false) insistent belief that the high drinking age saves lives, they are endangering young people, particularly girls, by forcing them into silence when they’re victimized and they happened to have had a drink.
Assault, especially sexual assault, is underreported even when alcohol isn’t involved, especially with young victims. Last thing these victims need is yet another reason to be afraid of coming forward with what an abuser did to them!
Worst part is, it makes me wonder if the pro-21 folks think the underage drinkers deserve it when these things happen to them! That there’s nothing wrong with victimizing someone who has committed the unforgivable sin of drinking before turning 21. For one, it would go to show in no uncertain terms that youth safety is very low on these people’s priority, but sadly it would mean they’re among the disgustingly high number of people who share the belief that if someone, generally a young woman, has engaged in some undesirable activity, like drinking underage, then she deserves whatever she gets.
So we need to lower the drinking age, so someone who has engaged in a harmless activity will not have to fear going to authorities when made the victim of a horrible harmful act of violence.
A number of news stories have come out lately about concerned groups seeking to ban books they find objectionable or inappropriate for kids, for a variety of reasons. One group in Wisconsin successfully got several teen books banned for depicting homosexuality. In Tennessee, some parents are trying to get books removed from library shelves for discussing sexual abuse, racism, self-cutting, and a number of other issues. They are also trying to remove a book about anorexia believing it would encourage teens to become anorexic. The list goes on.
The National Youth Rights Association opposes these efforts to “shield” teens from supposedly objectionable literature. Teenagers’ minds belong only to themselves and are not there for adults to mold as they wish. The only person who should be making decisions about what books a young person reads is that young person herself. Not her teachers. Not her principal. Not some “concerned” group of citizens. Not even her parents. She, and only she, is the one to make that decision. (more…)
I’m more inclined to agree with the first post here, but StudentActivism.net makes a good point that this case was about an injunction, not about the merits of the speech itself. Still, I can’t see how anyone could side with the high school on any issue related to this case.
According to Sam Stein in the Huffington Post, Sonia Sotomayor is “the odds-on favorite” to be chosen by Barack Obama to fill retiring Justice David Souter’s seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. She now sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Second Circuit in New York City. She is regularly described as liberal and a judicial activist - fine in my book - and it would good to have a first Hispanic and another woman on the Supreme Court.
But she has one major, very bad decision on free speech and press to her discredit, which should give everyone who values these freedoms in our society serious cause for concern about Sotomayor’s possible nomination to the High Court.
The decision came from Sotomayor’s Second Circuit Court last May, regarding Lewis Mills High School student Avery Doninger. While running for Senior Class Secretary, Ms. Doninger found reason to object to the school’s cancellation of a “jamfest” event, and characterized those who scotched the event as “douchebags” on her off-campus LiveJournal blog (she also characterized a school official in that same blog posting as getting “pissed off”). The school officials, in turn, took umbrage, prohibited Avery from running for Class Secretary, and disregarded the plurality of votes she received, anyway, as a write-in candidate. Avery sued the school officials, and the Federal District Court supported the school. Avery appealed to Sotomayor’s Second Circuit Court.
After acknowledging the Supreme Court’s 1969 Tinker decision, which held that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,” Sotomayor’s Court proceeded to affirm the District Court’s ruling - that is, Sonia Sotomayor and her colleague justices upheld the high school’s right to punish Doninger for her off-campus speech. Their reasoning was that schools have an obligation to impart to their students “shared values,” which include not only the importance of free expression but a “proper respect for authority”.
“Proper respect for authority” … is this what our democratic society and freedom is based upon? Last time I checked, I thought our democracy and freedom were predicated on the principle that all people have a right to express their opinions, which must certainly include disrespect for authority, if actions by the authority - such as canceling a school event such as “jamfest” - are at issue.
Or as Constitutional scholar and law-professor Jonathan Turley put it about this decision last year, “The continual expansion of the authority of school officials over student speech teaches a foul lesson to these future citizens. I would prefer some obnoxious speech than teaching students that they must please government officials if they want special benefits or opportunities.”
Why don't you 
