It’s First for a reason
By Scott White
Wooodford Sun Staff
It really began on Jan. 30. Last Friday, March 6, it happened at Woodford County High School.
About six weeks ago, people from around the country responded to a call from immigration advocates for businesses and communities to join a “National Shutdown Day,” where they urged people to stay home from work and spend no money, businesses to close up and students to walk out of schools and universities to protest against the new enforcement activities employed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) put into place by the current federal administration of President Donald Trump.
Though the success or failure of that event has yet to be fully analyzed, one consequence has been the ongoing student walkouts seen in American high schools. These have occurred in both red and blue states, in towns and in large and small cities like Jersey City, New Jersey, Lawrence, Kansas, Franklin, Tennessee, Lowell, Massachusetts, San Antonio, Texas, and South Bend, Indiana.
In mid-February, four Fayette County public high schools saw hundreds of students walk out protesting ICE. FCPS spokesperson Miranda Scully said in a statement, “This week, FCPS students participated in student-led walkouts to express their perspectives on current events. School staff worked directly with students and families to first ensure their safety and second to foster an environment where students felt empowered to engage with the world around them.” No one was put in detention, suspended or expelled.
Some school districts have sought to punish students while others have remained neutral, like Fayette County, allowing students to organize themselves and engage in their right of free speech and assembly . . . both contained in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
This has come in the midst of Americans and the World watching new immigration enforcement policies play out on the 24/7 news loop since the ramp-up last fall. Regardless of your opinion of these tactics, they were jarring and even gut-wrenching. Most recent polling of the issue supports the conclusion that this issue is particularly divisive among Americans, and watching the political ads in Kentucky over the last two months underscores its volatility in the public square.
A Reuters/IPSO poll of 4,638 adults nationwide taken from Feb. 18-23 showed that while 67 percent supported deporting unauthorized immigrants, 58 percent opposed the tactics the used by the Trump administration.
Now, politically speaking, those are some telling tea leaves. We are watching in real-time how politicians in Kentucky and nationally are dealing with it. But, for many of us, and many of our high school students, it is not a political puzzle to decipher, but a weighty issue to consider and perhaps take a stand.
Is it, then, any surprise that Woodford County High School students, on the threshold of moving into the adult world, have strong opinions on this issue? Or, that they want to express them
Some quick context. Just because many of the WCHS students are under 18 does not mean they do not enjoy First Amendment rights. The U.S. Supreme Court settled that fallacy decades ago. While it is true that those rights, like any of our rights, can be curtailed or infringed upon by “the government,” those restrictions must also be proper under the Constitution. And, to be clear, what happened last week at WCHS was the voice of students . . . not administrators, teachers or staff.
There are five individual freedoms protected by the First Amendment: speech, assembly, religion, press and petition. They are first because they are the bedrock of our democracy. They are first for a reason. So, whatever you or I may think about the positions taken by the WCHS students last Friday, there is no question that the exercise of two of those rights, speech and assembly, is protected. Our students engaged in core expressions of liberty last Friday.
Over the weekend, I posted a “teaser” on the Sun’s Facebook page, briefly reporting on the walkout and reminding our readers that the full story would be in this week’s paper, which is out today. That post struck a major nerve. As of Tuesday evening, the post was viewed nearly 10,000 times, was liked or disliked 2,000 times, shared 72 times and led to over 2,000 comments.
Since I review all of the comments to our posts, my tally was that about 55 percent agreed with the students’ position and 45 percent disagreed. Unfortunately, there were many who called for the students to be punished – from kicking them out to making them write essays, and many who wrongly said students don’t enjoy First Amendment rights of any sort.
But what I really liked, from a newspaperman’s perspective, is how our high school students engaged on a serious issue, organized themselves, worked with the administration to minimize the disruption and to ensure everyone’s safety, and then engaged in a collective expression of free speech by responsibly and coherently articulating the reasons for their protest. And, also importantly, they spurred a debate in this community about an issue that has torn apart cities like Minneapolis, Chicago and Los Angeles . . . perhaps something we will be grateful for if the new ICE tactics come to our town.
And, though some or many may not agree with their opinions and views, we should all take pride in the fact that we live in a country that not only allows them to state those opinions in a public gathering, but also protects their ability to do so.
We should all be proud that we have passionate patriots amongst us, and they are studying, working, playing and thinking every day in the halls of good ol’ WoFoCo High School.
Note: Given this protest was organized and put on by the students of Woodford County High School, the Sun thought it appropriate that some of the journalism students who work with the Sun as part of the Portrait of a Learner program engage in another First Amendment activity, a free press. So, the students formed a small reporting group to cover the event and write the news story. It is on the front page, top of the fold. We couldn’t be prouder of the excellent job they did in reporting this event for you and for our county’s historical record.