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NJ High Schoolers Organize Protest Walkout on Facebook

by Amar Toor on April 28, 2010 at 02:04 PM

After Governor Chris Christie proposed widespread cuts in funding for New Jersey's educational system, one former New Jersey high school student took it upon herself to organize a statewide walkout, via Facebook.

Eighteen-year-old Michelle Ryan Lauto, a student at Pace University, created a special event on Facebook calling for all students to take to the streets in protest during regular school hours. Officially, 18,000 students RSVP'd yes to the event, and word quickly spread through other media, like text messages and MySpace. Yesterday, when the day to take action finally arrived, thousands of students marched out of their classrooms and took to city halls and main streets throughout New Jersey to voice their displeasure.

The reactions of teachers and officials have been pretty mixed. While the New Jersey Education Association acknowledges the students' right to participate in "civil disobedience," it still feels that choosing to skip an entire day of school was inappropriate. Steve Wollmer, a spokesman for the Education Association, said that he thinks "the best outcome would be for the students to be in school and find a way to protest outside of school hours." Shockingly enough, eighth-grader Nah-Fee Hinton told NJ.com, "[Teachers] said we were wasting our time." Hinton, who's clearly a lot wiser than said teachers, went on to say, "But we don't believe that. We believe we can change."

Most of the current media attention on high schoolers' relationships with technology tends toward the negative: sexting scandals, Facebook addictions, cyberbullying and the like. What Lauto and her peers did, though, was demonstrate that social media isn't just a means for adolescents to gossip, flirt or preen. Under certain circumstances, and with the help of a swell of public sentiment, Facebook can help channel motivation and emotion into real action. These students should be applauded for not only caring about legislation that directly effects them, but caring enough to actually do something about it. And, despite whatever controversy it may stir, social networking, in this case, was the engine driving it all. [From: NJ.com and Facebook, via: Mashable]

Tags: activism, budget, education, facebook, HighSchool, NewJersey, protest, protests, socialnetworking, students, top, web

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