By Morgan Thaler
Staff Writer
On Sept. 5 the seniors of Mira Costa united as a class by wearing white in order to demonstrate their exasperation and frustration with the teachers’ union’s decision to use the students as leverage in their attempt to receive a pay raise.
Some Costa seniors including Rebecca Hext, Buster Baer and Lauren Winterhalder administered the collaboration of seniors by making a private group on Facebook where seniors could express their opinions on the situation. Many proposals were made, but the senior class ultimately decided to demonstrate their dissent with the teachers’ union’s actions by wearing white.
“Somehow we got stuck in the middle of an issue between teachers and administrators,” senior Lauren Winterhalder said. “We were used as leverage to negotiate an issue in which we had no control over, and in order to give the students a voice, the senior class wore white.”
Both teachers and administrators took notice of the senior class’ unification. Mira Costa Principal Dr. Ben Dale even went as far as to support the seniors by wearing both a white shirt and tie.
“Some teachers may never forgive me, but I wouldn’t have been able to live with not speaking up for something I believed in,” Dale said.
According to seniors in charge of the movement, the message was to get letters of recommendation while uniting as a neutral force.
“We didn’t want people to believe we were taking a side, but rather wanted to show that hundreds of students with differing opinions could come together as a neutral class,” Winterhalder said.
On the same day, some students attended the school board meeting where many students gathered to demonstrate further discontent with the situation. During public comments, anyone is allowed a 2-3 minute speaking period to express their views on any situation. Mira Costa senior Rafeed Kahn was the only student who gave a comment at the meeting.
“My message that I hoped to portray in my speech was my shock at the situation and a declaration of neutrality,” Kahn said.
Other than public comments, the issue was not brought up in the actual agenda of the school board meeting. However, on September 7 at 3 p.m., a tentative agreement was reached between the teachers and administrators.
“Though the impact of wearing white may not have been a great, opinion-altering eye opener, I do believe the senior class did get both the teachers’ and administrators’ attention,” senior Montana Hunter said. “I think that teachers saw that an issue beyond student control was having negative affects on their students, and I think it was additive to teachers and administrators reaching a compromise.”
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