About 200 Gilroy High students joined the hundreds and even
thousands of other high school students across the state and across
the nation Monday in a high school walkout in protest of laws
proposed regarding illegal immigrants.
About 200 Gilroy High students joined the hundreds and even thousands of other high school students across the state and across the nation Monday in a high school walkout in protest of laws proposed regarding illegal immigrants.
Being at the high school during lunch time, I had a first-hand view of the walkout. When the lunch bell sounded a mass of students gathered around the quad, yelling and screaming the way everyone usually does during a fight, but as I made my way over to take a look at what was going on, I realized that this was not the average lunchtime entertainment involving two heads and four fists.
I saw a mass of people making their way toward the front gates of the school near the main office. As I wondered what was going on, a few other onlookers informed me that the students were walking out in protest.
But how effective is this form of protest? I think the walkout form of protest has the potential to be a peaceful, non-violent and effective form of protest when executed properly.
However, I do not feel this was the case in Monday’s walkout. As a core group of students made their way toward the
front gates, dozens of others joined them, not because they even knew what the walkout was in support of, but rather because they wanted an opportunity to get out of school and not have to attend their final class of the day.
And what kind of message was sent to the school by walking out? Evidently not a very strong one as it was reported in the Dispatch that the district still received average daily attendance funds for the students because they stayed for two thirds of the day. If the students wanted to send a message to the school or to the district, it would have been better to just not attend school at all and protest outside the school. This would have sent a more direct message and caused the district to lose thousands of dollars
due to the loss of attendance. Not that I think the Gilroy Unified School District needs any less money, but if you want to get your point across …
The way the protest went, it caused there to be several protesters I refer to as the “bandwagon protesters,” the ones who were more concerned about heading over to McDonalds for a Big Mac and two apple pies for a dollar than the immigration regulations.
For a protest like the one staged Monday to be effective, every protester needs to be passionate, or at least know about the cause they are protesting for.
As I was driving down Monterey Street Monday afternoon, I saw the protesters marching down the street, escorted and followed by at least a half a dozen police cars.
Some were waving Mexican flags, while a few people in the back were waving American flags. And, frankly, I was
surprised at the amount of students took part in this. But did they accomplish what they set out to do?
It is difficult and certainly too early to say, but they made front-page news, and now I’m writing about them so you know at least a few people got the message. Now whether the people that matter heard the message is a different issue altogether.
