This story is syndicated from The Mac Shield, the newspaper of McCallum High School in Austin, TX. The original version ran here.
I am becoming fed up with the adoption of performance-activist culture by students at McCallum, a public high school in Austin, Texas, in recent years. Recent walkouts have posed risk to school funding and have lacked the educational value that protests are supposed to have. That is not to say that I oppose school walkouts altogether; however, I wanted to address my grievances with school protests and their effectiveness in addressing social, bureaucratic, and political issues, as well as address the manner in which protests are effective at school.
By protesting frequently on issues that have no relevance in a school setting, not only are we threatening school funding by significantly decreasing attendance (the Texas Education Agency, which administers school funding throughout the state, bases their budgeting decisions on school-by-school attendance), we are also providing people an excuse to cut class and disrupting class testing and lesson plans for unnecessary reasons.
A protest against the reversal of Roe v. Wade was hosted on May 12, 2022. The walkout was in protest of the possible reversal of the Supreme Court precedent. Various AP tests were happening during the duration of the walkout, and the chanting and use of megaphones posed a risk of distracting testers. Administration had no ability to do anything about Roe v. Wade. They are not our lawmakers. So what is the point of skipping classes and disrupting attendance if the TEA, district, and administration have no weight in the matter?
Keeping this in mind, if we as a student body want to spread awareness and educate people on global issues, would it not be more effective to reach the correct audience and still respect school funding by hosting a club or lunch meeting? If people are truly as passionate about the issues we are protesting as they claim to be, I believe they would attend any meeting hosted at an appropriate time. This would keep students from using protests as an excuse to cut class and would pose the same outcome: educating people on an issue. Because let’s be honest; any meeting or protest held at school will not be seen by lawmakers or make significant change. The whole point should be to educate.
In no way am I saying that we should remove protests from school altogether. There have been effective demonstrations at McCallum that have led to real change, such as the Nov. 15, 2021, sexual assault walkout. The basis of the protest was to address school policies regarding sexual harassment and assault cases at school and their ineffectiveness. By walking out and dropping student attendance, administrators were encouraged to make steps towards change, such as the creation of the student-led organization “Knights Against Sexual Assault.” The organization, originally sponsored by math teacher Kelly Wroblewski, is now sponsored by counselor Loren Croom, and its formation was a direct result of the walkout. The formation of KASA led to the assembly educating about consent later that year, as well as a “Healthy Relationship Support Group” to be created, facilitated weekly by counselors from “Expect Respect—a program of SAFE.” Though no policies were changed, the protest was effective and paved the way for real change at school. Because this protest was school-related and directly targeted the TEA and school administration, walking out was not a waste of time.
All this to say, protests need to be held in the spaces in which they are relevant. I encourage all those who protest to allocate their time at a Capitol march where lawmakers and representatives are more likely to hear your voice. There is nothing that the TEA or AISD administration can do about the Palestine-Israel conflict. Your lawmakers can. Put pressure on them and not our school funding.
