EDITORIAL: Walkouts have lost their power at Burke — here’s how to fix them
It may start with getting rid of the suspended 1% penalty.
By The Cageliner Editorial Board
Burke students walked out twice last week: on Thursday in favor of stricter gun control laws, and on Friday to demand action on climate change.
The walkouts, the latest in a three-year period with what feels like a walkout a week, supported important causes that demand attention and accomplished their initial goal under a right-wing government: raising awareness for their respective causes and encouraging students to become voters.
But with that most achievable goal reached long ago in other protests, a culture has emerged that encourages students to walk out — if it can be called that — for the sake of walking out without significant follow-up. Moreover, the lack of a 1% penalty for walkout-related unexcused absences seems to have backfired, despite the school’s best intentions.
For the students who stayed at the Capitol all the way through the rally to support the cause — a fairly large contingent of Burke’s delegation — the protest’s lack of energy and urgency may have felt disappointing; though the speakers came with lots to say, it ultimately boiled down to “this generation will vote and change things, eventually.”
The walkouts have already engaged future voters and interested students in their causes, but beyond that, it’s difficult to track meaningful change that has come from them — a fact that felt apparent in the distracted crowd at the Capitol on Thursday, even with students from the area whose absences were unexcused with a penalty. Though it was a gathering of thousands of students, gun control couldn’t have felt further off.
But a different problem also arose during the walkout: another large contingent of Burke’s delegation took the walkout as an invitation for an afternoon off, leaving the school under the guise of supporting background checks before taking it as an opportunity for an ostensibly school-approved mid-day break. Others made it to the event before leaving fifteen or thirty minutes in for a trip downtown for lunch.
This makes sense: on top of the lackadaisical energy, the walkouts, thanks to the waiving of the penalty, no longer only attract Burke students truly passionate about the cause, nor do they really count as a sacrifice for the students who participate, at least from Burke — a slap in the face to the students who sacrifice their GPAs and even their futures for these walkouts.
Instead, they’ve become something of a social event driven by peer pressure, events that students grudgingly attend but don’t find compelling. And why not skip the double period if there’s no penalty, if it doesn’t really have to be a walkout, if it can instead be a free period taken downtown?
After last week, it’s clear that everything about walkouts from top to bottom — from the messages and actions in the walkouts to the way students treat them to the administration’s policies surrounding them — deserves another look. It is no longer enough to promise to vote over and over, which seems to be the prevailing conclusion from these events. But it was never enough to walk out without penalty before skipping or leaving the event early.
To fix the problem with the current setup, governing bodies like Burke’s clubs and MoCo4Change must stress a new kind of action. MoCo4Change shouldn’t organize another walkout next — instead, they should draw upon their previous experience running sit-ins in Capitol Hill offices and registering 2,500 new voters.
More events and activities along these lines would further invest the students who participate, creating tangible pressure on lawmakers to make a change instead of repeating applause lines. Students who went almost certainly wouldn’t leave in the middle.
Additionally, students should demand and engage in further actions beyond these walkouts. They should phone bank and canvass for the issues and candidates about which they’re passionate, perhaps even get arrested for them if they’re willing to. And if the option isn’t there, if students are only walking out, they should make another option themselves. (It deserves mentioning that last week’s climate strikes were part of a much larger, global event; but similarly, they accomplish little without any follow-up action.)
With all that said, it still remains unacceptable to treat the walkouts as glorified free periods, and if another walkout takes place, the administration should at least reconsider its decision to waive the one percent penalty for unexcused absences.
It may result in decreased participation — though perhaps the school could encourage students to ask their parents to excuse their absences — but it would bring meaning back to the walkouts and ensure that the students who attend have legitimate interest in the cause.
