Last Thursday, Oct. 1, students at the Morton West High School in Berwyn Illinois held an anti-war peace rally at ten AM. They'd planned it for a few days. About 70 students showed up, the student we interviewed, who asked to be anonymous, told us. By the end of the day of peaceful, non-violent, courteous protest, around 30 students were suspended, told they would be expelled

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Last Thursday, Oct. 1, students at the Morton West High School in Berwyn Illinois held an anti-war peace rally at ten AM. They'd planned it for a few days. About 70 students showed up, the student we interviewed, who asked to be anonymous, told us.

By the end of the day of peaceful, non-violent, courteous protest, around 30 students were suspended, told they would be expelled. One parent of a suspended 16 year old told OpEdNews, that being expelled does disastrous things to a student's life. "There's trouble getting a drivers license, getting into a good college, and they can't finish high school in Illinois. "

We asked about the planning that went into the protest.

The student replied, "There were about three days of planning and we just told some people and whoever showed up showed up. It was all by word."

Here's what the student reported to OpEdNews.com, how the day proceeded at the school:

Me and a few of my friends decided to have a peace rally from 10:00 to 2:20. We made signs promoting peace out of poster board and notebook paper.

We decided to do it on that day, because it was all saints day and all saints day is a day of peace in other countries.

At 10:00 we sat down together in the lunch room. All the deans were there.

They got all the police. We all locked arms when the police arrived and they were all threatening us. The superintendent wanted us all arrested, but the police didn't do it.

They tried to make compromises with us, to move. So we decided to go to the part of the building where military recruiters are on other days. . They put "caution tape" around us.

In their compromise with us, they said they would let people come by us.

My friend had a peace shirt on, so they tried to pin the role of leadership on him. We all just said that we are there on our own free will. They asked for our Ids. All the deans were picking out people individually and bringing teachers down to identify people. One student didn't give up her ID, but she just left and nothing happened to her.

About 70 students started. Then it got down to about 30, when some got scared.

In the compromise they made with us they said there wouldn't be any consequences if we moved to that sectioni of the building.

We started chanting when they moved us and put up the caution tape and the table barricades.

Once we moved, they wouldn't let us leave, even to go to the washroom. If we walked away, we couldn't come back. But some students would talk to the deans and then go back to the protest and they didn't get in trouble. The deans were trying to get the students with the higher GPAs out. I think those are the students who aren't facing any consequences.

The superintendent's statement, included below, claims that students were asked to move outside, and told that if they did, they would not suffer consequences, but that many of the students refused and ended up, later, moving to a place near the principal's office.

Our anonymous student tells us,

"Most of the people who were true to the cause were just talking to each other-talking to deans, police and supertindent and the students who would come. The other students weren't able to go near us, because all the deans were guiding them away from us and barricaded the doors and put caution tape.

The people who left at 2:15 didn't get into any trouble and the people who left at 2:20 got the pink slips 10 day suspension and possible expulsion hearing, and it said Mob Action.

They were taking pictures the whole time and once we moved they were videotaping.

Since then, a number of parents and students have gathered together to deal with the potential permanent expulsion, for "mob action" that the school charged them with on the suspension pink slip they received. The student told us,

We had this meeting yesterday and there were about 12 people there who actually got pink slips. But there could be more who we don't know about.

There's a press conference tomorrow. We picked out people who were in the protest from the yearbook and tried getting their numbers so their parents could help fight the expulsion and ten day suspension.

OpEdNews also contacted a parent of one of the students. He reported, "They didn't destroy, hurt, disrupt anything. They even cleaned up afterwards."

The parent told OpEdNEws that a number of lawyers have offered to help, Pro Bono, the ACLU has called offering to help, numerous local papers have called, radio stations, and even BBC radio from Denmark.

But all the parents want is to get their kids back in school. Unfortunately, as one parent reports,

Some parents and I went in on Friday to beg and plead with the superintendent and he wasn't budging.

We haven't been able to get any schoolboard, school or superintendent. Nobody will return any phone calls to anybody. None of the media have been able to get them to call back either, including the Sun Times, some smaller papers, some radio stations, some anti-war groups. Nobody's been called back. They're not answering any questions, either.

The parent observed that a few weeks ago, one student had reported observing another student in the school with a gun. The principal decided not to take the information seriously, and put into effect the lockdown that guidelines called for.

Apparently, the observation was correct and later, according to Chicago Indymedia, police, acting on a tip, arrested a student who confessed to bringing an unloaded semiautomatic handgun into the school. The parent observed, "A few weeks ago, a student went in to the school with a gun and proper procedures were not followed. So now, the superintendent is trying to use our kids to detour attention..."

This parent thinks the superintendent is on his way out of his job.

Here's the Statement from the School Superintendent

In response to yesterday's student protest disruption of classes at Morton West, Morton High School District 201 Superintendent Ben Nowakowski released the following statement:
At 10:45 am on Thursday, November 1, I was notified that approximately 35 students had staged a sit-in protest of the War in Iraq at the Morton West High School cafeteria.

Upon my arrival at the West campus, the students were informed by school administration and Berwyn Police that their actions constituted a disruption to the school day. They were afforded the opportunity to take their protest outside where they would not be impeding the educational process and, if they did so, the would face no disciplinary action. Several members of the group elected to return to their classes. Other members of the group locked arms and refused to move from their location.

The rest of the Moron West student body was held in their classrooms while the situation was handled by administration and Berwyn Police. After some time and negotiation, the students ultimately moved from the cafeteria to the an area of the hallway adjacent to the principal's office. Once those students were relocated, the normal school day schedule was resumed and students were released from their classrooms for the lunch period.

The 25 students who elected not to disperse will be brought up for appropriate disciplinary proceedings as provided for in the school code of conduct. The parents of the offending students have been notified.

I want to stress that this action has only to do with the students' disruption of the educational process. Not only do students have a right to express themselves on matters of conscience but we encourage them to do so. In this instance, it is critical to note that the Morton administration did not say that the students could not protest. Rather, we asked that the students simply move their protest to an area of the school that would not disrupt the ability of the other 3400+ students at Morton West to proceed with their normal school day

We appropriately balanced the free speech rights of the students who sought to protest with the rights of the other Morton West students to learn. Our administration and staff acted appropriately and decisively to protect students' abilities to exercise their rights without trampling on the rights of other students to do the same.

The parents did try to reason with the school district leadership, as the parent reported, "Me and wife started all this when the superintendent of the school decided to be a hardass and not budge.

When he wouldn't listen to us and walked out of the office, we walked out of the school and said, if this is the way he wants to play, let's make some noise.

The press is coming out of the woodwork today. The PTO is helping us. They're already on it, siding with the kids."

I asked the father if he was concerned, that if he spoke up, his son would be targeted and punished. He replied, "What are they going to do with him. If they expel him, I'll put him in trade school."

Asked what he felt about the war, the father replied,

"Me, I hate the war. I believe it's a bunch of bullshit and a waste of our tax dollars and a waste of a lot of lives.

All these kids are getting right up to the draft age and the news is talking about draft and the military is running out of bodies. Three or more times a week the recruiters are at the school trying to get the kids to enlist in the service.

My kids saw this and decided to do something about it. I consider my son's friends my kids too.

I am proud of my son and that's why I'm doing this. I'm glad my son has a voice.

OpEdNews found out about the protest from Cindy Sheehan, who, when asked her opinion of the protest and the school's response, replied, "I think the students are courageous role models and their behavior should be rewarded and encouraged not punished. the students are representing the views of 70 percent of americans and what happened to them is just another fascistic attempt to suppress dissidents."

The parents and students have scheduled a press conference at the school for Tuesday morning, Nov. 7.

While OpEdNews knows the identity of the parent and the student we interviewed, we've decided to keep them confidential to protect them from possible unfair treatment by the school system.

OpEdNews contacted the US rep for the district, Daniel Lipinski (D-IL), but had not heard from him at the time of the posting of the article. It will be interesting to see if any of the school board members are up for election come Tuesday.

Sign the "In Defense of the Morton West Antiwar Students petition"

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

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He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

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more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

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