Protests of the Past Four Years

By CHARLOTTE KANE ‘19

Last Friday, April 19th, a group of Milton students rode into Boston to participate in a student-led strike to raise awareness of climate change issues and demand action from government officials. Ariane DesRosiers ‘19, one of the students in charge of organizing Milton’s participation in the event, describes the strike as “a tangible, concrete way of indicating our values and pushing for a better, more sustainable way of living here in Massachusetts.” For the senior class, this demonstration marks the end of four years of on-campus activism—strikes and protests that have ranged from a multi-day sit-in demanding action from administrators to a futile attempt to make a statement about mental health.

In April 2017, a group of students of color who came to Milton through academic merit programs met and discussed the “little comments that white students and teachers had made that week” and their accumulating impact. Fed up with the pattern he heard from these stories, Alex Palacios-Santos ‘19 started a document where these students could list the comments that “collectively weighed [them] down.” Palacios-Santos printed out these this document, titled “White Privilege Is,” and posted copies throughout campus.

The response from the community was immediate and intense. Palacios-Santos explains that the administration “was upset that these [posters] went up without permission,” and that people “were pointing out grammatical errors” to discredit the content. One student even suggested that the posters were an attempt to start a “race war.” The tension these posters created was exacerbated by racist incidents involving blackface and yellowface. That May, after learning that the students who had created and shared this racist material would not face the Disciplinary Committee, a large group of students of color decided to organize a protest to demand change from administrators.

Genesis Pimentel ‘19 explains that this group decided to walk out during Monday assembly and hold a sit-in in the Stu during recess. After a faculty member announced, “if you’re gonna sit you might as well sit for the whole day,” the event trailed on, with teachers bringing food from Forbes so that nobody had to leave. The sit-ins ending up lasting two days and included the vast majority of the Upper School student body.

Leaders of culture clubs wrote and signed a nine-page list of demands for administrators which included a request for a more active presence from the OMCD, more affinity groups, increased communication between minority students and the administration, and additional support for faculty who support these students. Heather Flewelling, the Director of Multiculturalism and Community Development, characterizes these protests as reminder that “the world outside of Milton impacts community members.”  The administration had to enact changes quickly. These results of this protest have included a more active presence by the OMCD (including plans to move their office to the Student Center), increased diversity programming, and changes in the Student Handbook that address identity-related harassment. Flewelling admits that these changes would not have come as quickly if such an event like the sit-ins had not happened.

Not all on-campus activism has had such concrete objectives or demands in mind. In response to last year’s school shooting in Parkland, FLLAG organized an event in the Stu to “stimulate civic engagement among students and to educate students about gun violence and gun control,” as explained by Jaime Moore-Carrillo ‘18, one of the students who organized the event. Occuring on the anniversary of the Columbine shooting and as part of a nationwide movement, the event “followed the format that most other schools were following: a sit-in, voter registration booths, and a station to contact legislators.” This event differed highly from the 2017 sit-ins in that it had been sanctioned by administrators; Jaime points out the “good support” from the administration to make the event run “with very few impediments.”

While it may have lacked the feeling of desperation that many students experienced during the sit-ins, the event still made a powerful point about gun violence. At the event, Arianna Bravo ‘19 and Pimentel shared their experiences with the issue—they both had friends who were shot. Pimentel explains that their speeches helped to break the “disconnect between other people’s experiences” and acknowledge that gun violence “affects people that we know,”  and “people are dying and this [issue] is real.” Reflecting on the demonstration, Moore-Carrillo hopes that “students who attended left the event with a basic understanding of the problem, or at least gained some exposure to it.”

Despite student’s efforts, however, not all planned demonstrations make a large impact, as was demonstrated by an attempted walk out in the fall of last year. Walker Harris ‘21 was one of two students who walked out of an underclassmen assembly to stand against disciplinary action regarding the large amount of class cuts of a student with depression. Harris explains that the event was organized by another freshman who “struggled with her own mental health and was closer” to the student. The organizer set up the walk out to “as a way to give those to struggle with mental health a voice.” Harris explains he walked out because he “has struggled with [his] own mental health and so have many of [his friends].”

Although the walk out was organized to support students with mental illness, Harris admits it could not make a large impact because so few students participated. He explains that despite efforts to encourage students to join, many of them simply chose not to participate, perhaps because “we already have things like mental health awareness week,” Harris conceded. Despite the small turnout, Harris is happy he walked out, explaining, “anytime you can use your voice to make the community better, you just should.”

The three Milton demonstrations described indicate the wide array of demonstrations that the current senior class has experienced in our time here. While not all have concrete demands in mind, they still give students a voice to speak what they believe. Pimentel establishes the takeaways from her experiences, saying, “the world is not black and white and and it’s not you vs. the world. It’s everyone vs. everything and problems intersect and they’re complicated, and just because you don’t experience one doesn’t mean your friend isn’t experiencing it.” She hopes that students who don’t experience certain issues try to empathize with others, “because why wouldn’t you?”