School day protests break the rules.

Byline: Anne Williams The Register-Guard

With passions astir about a possible war with Iraq, there may well be more student protests similar to one at Roosevelt Middle School last week.

School officials say they're all for free expression and are pleased to see students engaged - so long as it doesn't disrupt the school day.

When it does - as was the case at Roosevelt, where approximately 30 students up and walked out of their Thursday classes soon after 2 p.m. - students will have to pay the consequences, they say.

"It's such a passionate thing - I have a lot of respect for it," Roosevelt Principal Morley Hegstrom said. "What I want the kids to understand is it's not about a peace protest. It's about an unauthorized group absence. It's about the disruption in school. It's about basically not following directions to stay in class. It's about skipping."

Hegstrom said she planned to meet with the students and their advisers this week to "figure out a fair consequence."

Penalties for skipping school vary with a student's history and the circumstances, she said, but may include community service, lunch detention or even suspension. She believes these students were also guilty of disruption and insubordination, given that she'd warned against the walkout and offered alternatives over the school's public address system.

She'd told them they could protest after school, and that they could have table space during lunch time and breaks to rally for their cause.

Walkouts are specifically addressed in the district's Student Rights & Responsibilities Handbook. Here's what it says:

"Student-organized 'skip days' or other unauthorized group absences of students are not acceptable. Permission for absences for this type of activity will not be granted."

Other districts don't spell it out so clearly, but the rules are the same. Springfield's student handbook says student gatherings "shall not disrupt the educational process," and Bethel's policy says they "shall not disrupt the orderly operation of the school."

Willamette Principal Jim Jamieson said he usually has managed to stave off similar episodes by reasoning with students and offering them alternatives. He has been talking with a group of about two dozen students who want to stage some kind of anti-war rally or protest, and he believes that they'll only do so outside of class time.

Doing otherwise, he said, is not only against the rules, but it could also anger fellow students on both sides of the debate over war.

While the policy is clear about student walkouts, school district officials say it's up to principals how to deal with the aftermath.

"This is exactly one of the reasons why we have building principals," Bethel spokesman Craig Hawkins said. "We need professionals to make a judgment call on the right way to handle things when kids do the things that kids do."