School shooting in Florida

I’m jealous - my wife got to meet Ted Lieu at her school today during their walk out.

I think it’s nice of the principal to offer such a great teachable moment for the parents and children at that school. It really gives people like you and your wife an opportunity to illustrate clearly to your kids that sometimes it’s worth doing something “wrong” for something you truly believe in.

Reminds me of the obituary I saw many years ago of the driving instructor who died after driving his car off a cliff.

Trying…so hard…not to laugh…

If the GOP wants to double down on how much they hate LBGT people, and they want to target sympathetic teenagers, well… Please Proceed, Governor.

They’re going to lose an entire generation of voters.

It’s so true. Last week I had a conversation with two college freshmen guys (seemingly quite straight, almost jock-types) about how Call Me By Your Name “destroyed” them. The times, as they a’ say, are changing.

Now if only they can be bothered to vote.

Some schools here arranged for students who walked out in protest to register to vote. I’m going to guess that it wasn’t just a local thing.

I’ve actually seen a few lawyers postulate that allowing this opens them up to future law suits when another group wants to do a similar thing. Like say a Young Republican group wants to do a walk out to protest for the 2nd Amendment or whatever. Now the school is in a position where they’re taking political sides if they don’t let them. Eventually kids can just walk out for any reason or the school is in a legal bind.

Still shitty of him, imo, but there could be a method to his madness. I suspect that isn’t what motivated him though.

Yeah when my kids were in public school I noticed they took attendance VERY seriously.

Actually educating kids, not so much, but attendance yeah.

My daughter participated in the walkout today… she said a couple of students were yelling at each other at one point. Not sure if it was a political disagreement or (more likely) just a teenager being a disruptive jackass.

I thought her principal did a nice job with a delicate subject in his letter to parents… here’s an excerpt:

Honestly, marking them as absent is the logical thing to do, and follow all protocols that would normally happen when a student misses a class.

If the parents call and mark the absence as “excused” update the record and move on.

It’s a long way to November, and to 2020, and I don’t have kids, so maybe I’m misjudging things, but it doesn’t look like the young people of the United States are losing interest in this issue.

And, sadly, that interest is likely to be reignited sometime between now and then.

That’s pretty much where I land. Schools probably shouldn’t start “facilitating” protests, exactly, because that’s going to get really hard to be consistent on.

Schools shouldn’t add any specific punishments for protesting, but if they’re enforcing rules that have been clear from the start and apply to the protest, that’s fair game. In some cases, that’s going to look harsh. I know some of the protests have been things like assembling on the football field, but others have been leaving campus, and there are plenty of schools where the penalty for leaving campus is detention or even suspension. I don’t think this is a popular opinion, but I think if those rules were there at the beginning of the school year, the school is well within their rights to uphold those.

One of the key aspects of using civil disobedience to make a point is to actually accept the punishment that society hands out, which emphasizes the commitment and can also make folks question the moral underpinnings of meeting out that punishment. So the students should be marked absent “on their permanent record” for these walk-out/protests and they should also consider that a badge of pride. And if the official rules call for suspension and are justly enforced, then the students should even eat the suspension and consider that a badge of pride.

This, according to the ACLU, is exactly the line schools should have taken and it appears that it’s the line most schools did. We got a call from our daughter’s school that she had left the school on non-school business (it’s a small school) and another to inform us that she had returned. “We have to call everyone – It’s protocol,” her proud and somewhat abashed teacher said.

If the punishment is disproportionate to walking out for any other reason, at that point the school is opening itself up to legal action.

Which is correct, imo. Civil disobedience generally has consequences. If you aren’t willing to take a tiny hit to your attendance, one could safely argue that you didn’t really give a shit anyway. The school shouldn’t be playing favorites or eventually they’re going to have to decide who’s freedom of speech matters more.