Missouri
2014-12-10 18:33:59 -0800
To: Clayton High School
Help Me Fight Against Schools Punishing People For Standing Up for What's Right
This campaign has ended.
Dear Clayton High,
Stop giving detentions for people fighting for a cause and using their freedom of speech. I was punished for participating in a Ferguson protest on campus at our school. I understand that you are upset that I wasn't in class for half the period. However, this is important to me because I need to fight for my rights as a person of color. I feel that I was unfairly targeted because many of the kids who went only went to get out of class and a lot of the white identified students were not punished. Not only that but I notified my teacher ahead of time. There are better options and better ways to find solutions to a problem and detention, suspension, or even worse, expulsion is not one of them. We need to find better solutions like Restorative Justice or Talking about what happened and figuring out how to solve it.
Why is this important?
Schools shouldn't punish students for standing up for justice. I was fighting for my civil rights and my rights as a human being and that is why the issues surrounding Ferguson and Racism itself are important to me. I believe the school also needs to adopt better alternatives other than suspension, expulsion, and detention because this is not helping people's education but set them up for things like incarceration and pushing them away from school. This is not the first time that people of color have been unfairly targeted. We have been punished more than most of the white kids have been even though we are not behaving worse. It is important to work together and find solutions and it has been proven that current punishments do not work. Not only am I targeted but people with disabilities, other people of color, people who Identify as trans*, and much more are affected by schools current practices. We need to work together.