On Jan. 30, over 800 San Dieguito Academy (SDA) students walked out of class at 12:40 p.m. in a protest organized by SDA’s Multicultural Anti-Racism Coalition (MAC) club. In November of the first semester, MAC organized an on-school walkout protesting ICE.
More recently, on Feb. 6, over 400 Falcons walked out of fourth period at 12:40 p.m. The student organizers — who came forward as Trey Riddle (11) and Leah Archdale (11) — called on Mayor Todd Gloria to remove ICE from the city, Escondido Police Department to cut ties with ICE training and the District to revise the now-repealed AR 5145.13.
According to the school’s attendance office, 467 students were marked with an unexcused absence, and a few others had an excused absence around the time of the walkout. The number of students who were not marked absent by teachers, had an excused absence or did not participate in the walkout but still sustained an unexcused absence remains unclear.
“I think the message [of the walkout] was: ‘We are thinking individuals, we are part of this society, we are young adults, we have our opinions,’” English 9 College Preparation and Honors with Ethnic Studies and Advanced Placement English Language and Composition teacher Brianna Milholland said. “Some [students] can’t vote yet. [They] are not yet 18. This is the access that [students] have to communicate the perspectives that [they] have and how [they] feel about what’s going on in our world.”
The night of the walkout at this school, CCA students Gabriel Turquie (12), Asher Harron (12) and Aydin Rafii (12) found the @tphs_walkout page. At dinner together, Turquie and his friends “wanted to continue the movement and bring it to [their] school,” so he created @cca.ice.walkout, “right there.”
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“I think the most ideal route …. would be after lunch,” Turquie said. “Everyone meets, and … we walk through the walkout while third period is going on, hopefully [we] finish the route in more than 30 minutes so we would get to class 30 to 40 minutes late. Then students can go to class or just skip that period completely.”
At CCA, lunch runs from 11:42 a.m. to 12:14 p.m. while third period starts at 12:22 p.m. and ends at 1:52 p.m.
Besides spreading awareness via Instagram, “word of mouth has been pretty good,” according to Harron.
The CCA organizers polled their followers on Instagram; they received 111 walkout confirmations. In comparison, this school’s walkout account received 88 confirmations.
“That’s just people on Instagram,” Rafii said. “A lot of people at CCA don’t have Instagram, definitely … Everyone’s just been talking about it. We’re expecting a lot more than that.”
As the students prepare for their walkout on Feb. 20, Harron believes that — although belated compared to the walkout at this school and SDA — they are “inflicting really good change.”
“There’s still change to be inflicted,” Harron said. “You know, I think it might even be better that we’re having it now to show that … you’re still fighting … for [ICE] to be controlled. Because, I mean, pulling [ICE] out of Minnesota is just the first step.”
In reflection of the SDA, this school’s and the upcoming CCA walkout, Riddle believes that the sequence of events is “not a movement that’s going to die out without changes.”
“It’s only going to grow bigger as the problems are still escalating and more and more schools are going to be participating,” Riddle said. “I think it’s …more of a snowball than a domino [effect], because [the protests] are not just all of the same size. It’s going to keep getting bigger until something actually happens.”
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