On Trump school protests, Kshama Sawant is wrong

Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant is upset with Seattle Public Schools for adhering to a longstanding policy to hit students with an unexcused absence if they skip class to protest President-elect Donald Trump on Friday. She said that the district should “respect the right of students to protest.”

Her position conflates two unrelated topics and, with respect, she’s flat out wrong.

According to The Seattle Times, a number of students are expected to walk out of school on Friday in protest of our next president. In a letter, Sawant said she wants the district “to recognize these protests as legitimate actions in defense of the rights of students, their families, and fellow community members.”

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For their part, district officials say they cannot participate in any political activity because they’re a public institution, and it’s common for students to receive an unexcused absence when they choose to leave campus for a non-school sanctioned activity.

Sawant is correct to assert these students have a right to protest; she’s, without a doubt, incorrect to claim that the unexcused absence is inappropriate or somehow an affront to their rights. Your right to protest doesn’t mean you get coverage from consequences. Workers, for example, who decide to skip out on their jobs on Friday so they can speak out against Trump face termination, even if they have a right to protest.

Is the school district supposed to allow any student the right to leave campus to protest on any given day? If so, if they protest daily, does that mean they get to graduate having never been to class? Of course not.

Simply agreeing with the protest’s message doesn’t mean these students shouldn’t be held to the rules. That’s what this is really about: Sawant supports the movement, wants to continue to build it (and she wisely understands she needs young blood to join and empower the movement), so she’s trying to intimidate the district into allowing these students to disobey reasonable rules. I suppose it’s admirable in that she’s doing it so they can be more politically engaged, though somehow I doubt Sawant would be up in arms if the students got an unexcused absence for protesting at a Planned Parenthood.

Want to protest? Go for it. You have that right. But do so knowing you’ll get hit with an unexcused absence, and if that’s all that’s stopping you from going out and marching, then you just learned a great adult-lesson: actions have consequences.

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