Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Rebellion At It's Finest (Sort Of)

My senior year of high school, my school got a new principal who was a lot more strict than our old principal had been. She had security patrolling the halls to herd students into classes before the bell even rang, started cracking down on the slightest dress code infraction, and talked to students as if they were elementary school children. Most of the time, seniors put up with the new rules because we only had to deal with it for one year, but when she announced that she would have chaperones patrolling the dance floor at prom and that she would personally choose the playlist, we decided it was time to take action (Seriously, who wants to dance to the Chicken Dance at prom?). So a group of seniors started planning an Anti-Prom by setting up a location, DJ, and security for a dance to be hosted on the same night as our school-sponsored prom. Eventually, concerned parents heard about the Anti-Prom and called the school telling the principal that she could not allow this to happen. In response, she met up with us and agreed that we could choose our own playlist as long as the sponsor teacher of the senior class approved it; which was fine by us since we got along well with our sponsor.

Looking back on the situation, I think we made a bigger deal of it than we needed to, and we could probably have handled it in a way that caused less chaos. After all, it was only a high school prom. However, we did get our point across and came up with a compromise that worked for both sides.

So, since I love stories, my question is: What have YOU done in the past to question authority? How did you justify your actions at the time? Do you still believe they were justified, or was there a better way to handle the situation?

I can't wait to hear what you guys have to say!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Okay so I don't know if this counts as questioning authority technically but it is definitely something that my senior class is remembered for. Okay so my senior year we decided to go all out and pull a few "pranks" during our last week of school. Every senior class before had attempted this but usually failed. My class decided to change the rocks on our rival school to a B instead of the LL. So about 100 or so of us gathered earlier in the day and decided to meet later that night at the hill. Everything was perfectly planned out...or so we thought. We were supposed to take as few cars as possible but there ended up still being about twenty or so cars parked at the bottom. We literally climbed up this cliff to get to the top and once we made it to the top began moving the rocks. We were just about done with the B when someone noticed a cop car at the bottom turn on their lights and speed off towards town. We didn't think anything of it really until we got a phone call that somehow our rival school had found out and called the police. Not long after the giant spotlights begin surrounding the mountain and everyone basically ran for it. I, unfortunately slipped, twisted my ankle and when trying to catch myself got a cactus stuck inside my hand. It was a great night. I don't know if it was just the rush of trying to get away or what, but we just pulled it straight out and kept going. So pretty much the entire LLPD was surrounding us at this point on their microphones telling us turn ourselves in and there was no way I was going to. Next, they began towing every car parked at the bottom and thankfully I didn't drive. My group was making our way day around 2 or 3 in the morning when we heard ATV's coming up the mountain. We literally fell to our backs hanging off the mountain and if the officer would have pointed his light just a few feet up, he would have caught us, but luckily he didn't and turned around. We finally made it to the bottom scrapes and bruises in tact and made it out free. Unfortunately for the others who turned themselves in, had to deal with court and everything else. We ended up on the news and got what was supposed to be a"slap on the wrist" but ended up being a good job from teachers, but don't do it again speech. I would definitely say we were successful :)

Meagan said...

Wow, Bridget's story was pretty intense. The one I can remember is from my senior year as well when the school was going to give us permission to go to the girl's soccer game for state. We had to sign permission slips and everything. But then the girls didn't win the game to get to state, but everyone had already signed their forms, and I remember we were sitting in pre-calc and this kid Greg was raising hell with our calc teacher (who is also his aunt) about how they should still let us leave school and go to the game even though we wouldn't be playing. He started getting all diplomatic about how the form didn't state that it was solely if we made it to state or not, only that it allowed us to leave school and go to the game. Then we went to the principal and then the texting started. At the end of the day, there was a courtyard full of seniors raising hell about how we should be able to go to the game because that's what we signed to be able to do. We didn't end up being able to go but I thought it was super empowering how we handled it and I thought that we had a pretty good argument.

Kathleen Martin said...

Interestingly enough, my senior year, we also had a go with our calculus teacher.
He was really tough. We were pretty much doing AP Calculus without the benefit of calling as such, so most students taking his class didn't like him. Naturally, there were hard feelings all year about him and this peaked at the end of the year.

The tipping point happened when he allowed us to come in an hour before school to start our final. He never showed. We were all so angry about it, that we refused to go to his class (first one of the day) until we spoke with the principal.
Unfortunately, the principal was late that day and after half and hour the assistant principal forced us to go to class. I don't remember if we learned any calculus that day, but we certainly learned about civil disobedience.

akelly said...

Alright one of the biggest concerns in my high school was the question of how to distribute the budget between clubs and it was tradition that the sports teams received the highest amounts while the fine arts programs continually got their minimal funding cut year after year, and other clubs did not even receive a budget. So, my Human Rights group was busy trying to come up with new ways to fundraiser in my junior year in order to promote and raise money for the upcoming Invisible children protest. As the President, I was in charge of helping organize and run these activities.

Now in my high school in order to do a fund raiser you had to first get an approval from the activities director. He was the teacher of the Associated Students at the school which did much in the ways of organizing school events and was composed almost entirely of athletic individuals who participated in one or more school sports. For this reason it was not surprising that when I first approached the activities director about a fundraiser for spring he was opposed because the school's volleyball team was also doing a fundraiser at the same time. He also claimed that the fundraiser did not directly benefit the school and so could not be held on campus.

With a group of students, I decide to go against his word and promote the cause anyway, creating and selling t-shirts at lunch. When questioned I claimed that it was an individual class project rather than for the club organized by the teacher. I was confronted a few times by teachers but after explaining the cause they not only let us be but a few actually bought t-shirts and registered to show up to the protest. By the time we were questioned by the Activities Director the protest was only a day away and we had raised over $500 for the event. He eventually gave in and apologized for being so headstrong and even donated money to the cause, but not before lecturing me on the importance of school protocol. Overall, however, it was still a good turnout.

That weekend at the actual protest we were met with even more issues when the cops showed up and tried to force us off the property even though we had permission from the city to use the park and its facilities. We eventually ended up marching to City Hall and protesting for two more days until finally being addressed by a Congresswoman and our goal of political recognition fulfilled, able to retire to our regular lives. With Human Rights, it is always a struggle against authority otherwise there would be no controversy and therefore no advancement.

Amy said...

Wow bridget, what you did sounded completely epic! (I definitely would have been freaking out about the time the cops came around haha).

Meagan and I went to the same school, but I had a different perspective on the whole matter because I was in student council and dealt with the authority figures of the school on a regular basis, and therefore knew there was no way they were going to let us go to the game no matter how well reasoned the seniors decided they were. The whole 'not going to state' thing wasn't planned out very well. It was basically a bunch of seniors throwing a tantrum about not getting to go to a state game, and putting all of our other senior privelages on the line just to go debate with the principal. Yeah, it definitely sucked that we didn't get to go watch a state game that year, but it was immature of us to try to justify it. We were also incredibly lucky there were no ramifications for everyone causing such a ruckus over it because this was already after a couple of our senior students went and defaced the archbishop's house so our senior class was already on thin ice with the authority figures in the school.

Eric R said...

I've never done anything that intense because my school was really strict and would probably expel people for anything. We couldn't pull senior pranks as we were specifically told that no graduation ceremony would be held. I did try to call my friend out of school once senior year by pretending to be his father and saying he had a dentist appointment. EPIC FAIL! It didn't work at all. I really had no respect for the system by the time I was a senior. It was ridiculous that I had plans to travel 2200 miles from home and I would be living alone without seeing family for 4 months yet I still had to get permission slips signed by parents to leave school or attend a field trip. I justified my action because honestly I was going to have control of my own life in a few months yet things like permission slips were still needed. I still think my actions were justified because the control that high school exhibited on seniors in my school was ridiculous. A better way to handle it would have been to call my friends parents and have them lie about a dentist appointment XD

Sam said...

I have never actually questioned authority in a major way regarding school. But, some people at my school did, however. My high school was just south of Silicon Valley in California. We were pretty much 50% hispanic and 50% white. This caused a little bit of trouble last year on cinco de mayo. Wearing flags was against the rules at my school, but on 5 de mayo, several Mexican kids showed up draped in the red, white, and green of Mexico and of course several American kids thought it would be funny to show up covered in red, white, and blue. Long story short, the American kids were told by our assistant principal that they either had to change or go home. They told their parents, who told the press, and pretty soon we had emails, letters, and threatening phone calls coming in from all over the country about who was within their rights. Both sides protested and now the pro-Americans are heading to court against the district. In fact, we even had a news helicopter flying over our school all day waiting for a race riot to break out.

I don't know which side was right, but I did not enjoy suffering while two sides questioned authority at the expense of my senior year. This is America where its great to be patriotic, but sometimes you've really just got to let it go and allow others a day to support their own culture.

Jesus said...

During my sophomore year of high school in my Health Science Technology class, there was no permanent teacher for the first semester and we had a long term substitute. She was the greatest teacher, taught us how to do stuff in one semester that should have taken a year. At the end of the fall semester she was replaced by a new permanent teacher whom non of us liked, and we therefore decided we should do as much as possible to make her leave. When she would try to teach a lesson people would walk out and come back at the end of class. One day she put one of the students in a corner (come on, a sophomore in high school) and then asked "did you learn your lesson" and he replied "no, I'm not in second grade." When she would bend over students would make farting noises, and one day someone left a woopie cushion onn her seat and she actually fell for it. On another day she told us not to buy tickets to a comedy show happening on campus during her class, and when she realized most of the class did she said "I am very disappointed in all you leaving" to the students as we all left. By the end of the year she was fed up. Unsurprisingly, when we returned from summer break, the next years sophomore's did not have a teacher once again =). At the time, the actions felt right, and giving her hell seemed like the right thing to do. However, now i actually feel guilty, but I am glad she left because the next teacher was much nicer and more knowledgable than her to the future students.

Tony said...

So before a month of our junior year had passed, some of my classmates and I realized that our AP English teacher just wasn't fulfilling the role that we thought an AP teacher should fulfill. Somehow, I'm not sure how, we came to the conclusion that since she was making our life difficult by not doing her part to prepare us for the AP test we were justified in making her life difficult in reverse. It started with little things like showing up late on purpose but by the end of the year had escalated to hiding books we needed for the day and also hiding an alarm clock that was set to go off at the same time each day and disrupt class for a few minutes.
Looking back there really was no cause to question her authority 1) because we all did fine and 2) by disrupting her class we weren't rebelling we were just doing our part to contribute to our unpreparedness for the AP test.