An Exercise in Democracy

To the citizens of Santa Monica who are concerned with the state of our schools:

Yes, it is true: my Advanced Placement United States History teacher, Michael Felix, offered extra credit to his students to attend the Thursday, May 18 school board meeting. And yes, it is also true that the many who attended, including me, may have been unaware of the meeting’s central debate.

Yet it was not the alluring idea of extra credit or mere blind faith that drew an overwhelming number of students to crowd the City Hall conference room beyond maximum capacity. Rather, it was the opportunity to witness the process of reform and history at work. Felix constantly reminds us of the great agitator John Lewis’ advice: if you want to change to occur, “always get in the way.”

I know that in my class, Felix stresses the importance of reforms and spends considerable time teaching us how the citizens’ right to invoke change is the backbone of the US Constitution. As a generation of upcoming adult citizens, we recognize that this power is a responsibility crucial to maintaining our human rights, an American tradition to be upheld.

We students did not protest under the influence of our teachers, especially not Felix, or the temptation of rebellion, but rather because we have learned the necessity to take advantage of our student voices.

Felix neither advocated that we attend to support him or his cause, nor offered extra credit to allure us for his own “twisted” purposes. Rather, he seized the opportunity to facilitate the discovery of student power.

It has only been within the last half-century that students have found and continue to encounter their relevance and ability to alter their surroundings: examples include the Vietnam War protests and sit-ins and the East LA walkouts, both of which inspired us to take a stand.

Just because Felix taught us about these historical events does not mean he is the “Cesar Chavez” of the Samo revolution. Felix remarked himself, “It was to be an exercise about the participation in democracy,” not a chance to take advantage of students for his own purposes.

The students did not congregate around Felix because they were told to or refuse to leave under his direction; the students stayed because they trust one of their finest teachers and the safety of his support. That same hall has been crowded at previous meetings, yet the fire department was not called.

It is unfair to blame teachers for giving extra credit or the students for protesting — that serves as a distraction to the real issues that need to be discussed. Hopefully, at tonight’s meeting, the quandaries and dilemmas of the status of Samo will be addressed. As historian Howard Zinn cites from the Revolutionary War period, “‘Tyranny is Tyranny let it come from who it may.”

Chelsea Rinnig