By Whose Rules

[Music] [Music] I'm only using this tape for my own information. No one else will hear this. It's just so I can get the quotations right. Tell me, Mr. Langston, where do things stand now? I've agreed to present the whole matter to the board of education at their next meeting. Mrs. Cole and Matt will be there. Where do things stand now? We've agreed to discuss everything with the school board. Well, what is everything? First of all, every school policy which affects student rights and and to get a new election declared and get the suspension taken off my record. Well, tell me, Matt, how did it all get started? Well, it actually got started in history class project. Any more questions for group one. Okay. Very good. Group one. That was great. That was great. All right. Come on, group two. Let's go. Let's go. Who's speaking for group two? I am. Come on, Matt. And we don't have much time left. Let's go. Okay. Our subject is political reform. And the way that we could start political reform is to change things in this school. Tracy's going to tell you about it. Tracy. Okay. things to reform. One with what? More of an open school. What do you mean by more open school, Tracy? Like being able to go off uh school grounds during lunchtime? Okay. Two, we don't think we should have hall passes. Does that mean we can go to the library anytime we want to? Who wants to go to library? Okay. Okay. Okay. Look, everybody will be able to get in their ideas and questions later on. Okay. Finish up, Trace. Three. We don't think we should have grades. [Applause] Hey, come on. No, hold on for a minute. We haven't told you our best idea, Terry. Uh, we thought about the real political parties in their convention. They put together a platform. It's a list of things that they plan to do. And we thought if everyone run for student offices in the school would put out a platform, then the other students would know what they stand for. I think the problems with this platform idea were obvious right from the start. Let's add on to these ideas. Anybody think got anything you want to add? Die? I think they had a good idea about going out for lunch, but with the time we have now, it doesn't make sense to go anywhere. We have to have more time so we can get back. I think we should have just as much power as the teachers. And if we have a bad teacher, we should be able to spend the teacher. Power to the student. Power to the student. Hey, here you have these rowdy young people first thing getting up, shouting in class, disorderly, showing no respect whatsoever. We weren't the ones who were making the noise. We were just trying to present our ideas to the class. Mhm. And that's what free speech is all about. You don't stop one group from presenting their ideas because you're afraid of what someone else will do. In order to have a good learning experience, you have to have an atmosphere of freedom in the classroom. And you're going to take chances when you have this atmosphere of freedom. I'm sure my being a lawyer has been some influence on Matt. We talk about politics at the dinner table. Everybody's encouraged to develop his own opinions. I think of politics as my hobby. It's my job to anticipate trouble. I've got to protect the rights of the majority to get an education. What happened next, Matt? Well, I propose to the student council that they make it a rule that anybody who runs for any kind of student council office has to have a platform. Any questions? ideas. Mike, will you define platform for us? Platform is like if somebody's running for certain offices or something, they tell what they want to do. If they want to change rules or make better the rules that are there or get something done, that's better. I think people just lie. They'll use that line, vote for me and I'll set you free. Yeah. And if you think they're lying, don't vote for them. You can tell when people are lying. Okay. Anybody Do you think Mr. Wangston will let us try to change all these rules? Well, Eva, I think you should try and find out. Okay. Um, who's all for it? Oh, who's all against it? Uh, twothirds of the student council, the most responsible students in the school, voted against the idea. Yeah, but what if they had? I would still have to ask myself whether or not in good conscience I could turn this school into a political arena. You know, don't you, that the student council voted against having everybody run on platform, right? Yes. Well, Matt and I decided that our platform was good and that we were going to run no matter what. And once we knew that we were running, I thought, well, why don't we get other people to run for the other offices and then we could all run together and be a slate and then we could really get something done. So, you got together a slate of candidates in your history class, right? Was it the same group that thought up the platform idea? Yeah, we were all friends and we were all pretty political. Hey, how about act? Alliance for constructive teaching. Hey, act. Yeah, that's in our nation. Action. Yeah. Yeah. But it kind of seems that, you know, the subject really isn't about teaching. It's about rights. And that's what we're trying to do. Think of something that has to do with rights. Reform is is going to happen soon. When? No, wait a minute. That didn't work cuz the T and the H are kind of sure. Students unified for rights of expression. Hey, that's good. This slate was I ran for president, Tracy for vice president, Terry for secretary, and Monica for treasure. What next? Well, we wanted to get known, so Tracy wrote up an article for the school newspaper. This article is the opinion of a special interest group. If I print this opinion, I've got to print everybody's opinions. But this will make it more interesting. I think it would get out of hand pretty quickly. A lot of stuff they print in the paper nobody reads. Isn't the chess club a special interest group? What about the Y? Those groups are open to everybody. Well, look at sports. If you're not good enough for team, I'll cut you. Let's just don't get into all of that, okay? Try to see this thing from my point of view for a minute. I've got the whole community to answer to. I've got the school board. I've got your parents. I've got other everybody else's parents. And I don't think for a minute they're going to stand by and watch the school attacked through the school newspaper. We're not attacking the school. I mean, who do you think puts up the money for the school newspaper? It's the school board. Mr. Langston, we're not attacking the school. I'd say you've got some pretty negative ideas about some of its policies. Well, I'd say we've got positive approaches to making better rules. It seems to me you kept pretty calm. Yeah, we all decided before he went in that nobody would get mad. If we did, he'd just throw us all out and say, "I told you so. You're all just a bunch of troublemakers." I would advise any student who's going to stand up for his rights to do it calmly, politely, and constructively. If you attack, why then the people have no response other than to get mad at you. And sometimes they have a lot of power over you. If you're reasonable, then they have a chance to be reasonable back. Matt, I assume that you didn't take Mr. Langston's advice and dropped the whole thing. No, but you did give up on the article. We made our own memory of it. How did you feel about the shoe students handing out memoragraphs of their slate and platform? They were within their rights. I tried to tell them it was bad judgment. But judgment is a funny thing. Nobody can be right all the time. No matter how wise and experienced a person is, he needs to listen to the ideas of others. That's the ideal of our democratic society. Here, these kids were taking the education that they learned in the classroom and using it in real life. That's what it's all about because history is not something that just happened 200 years ago. It's happening today, tomorrow. What happened next? Tracy and I proposed to the student council. They make the sure slate official candidates in the election. How did that go? All four. All against here. Again, you had the existing student council voting heavily against their proposal. This proves something. What would you say it proves? It proves to me that we already have a pretty good way of installing student officers. What was the number of procedure for nominating candidates for office? Well, the student council nominates two people for each office, and they have to be approved by the principal and the faculty adviser. I could have vetoed the nominations of Matt and Tracy right then, but I respected their right to get nominated by the normal procedure. And you got nominated for president and Tracy for vice president anyway. Right. You can chisel that on my grave. This man believes in normal procedure. How did the US slate run its campaign? Well, we handed out a few more mammograph sheets and we wanted to put up posters, but my feeling about the posters was that some of these kids hadn't been nominated by the normal procedures and didn't have a right to put up posters. We were a group that stood for something. We wanted to campaign. Some of these sure candidates really didn't have a chance. They were just trying to ride in on the popularity of Matt and Tracy. Tracy and I wanted to put sure after our names on the ballots, but he wouldn't allow that either. If I let Matt and Tracy put sure after their names on the ballot, they would have had a tremendous advantage because of the publicity. I was already getting phone calls from some of the parents because of the mimograph sheets. What happened in the assembly? Well, every officially nominated candidate supposed to make a short speech before the student body. Tracy and I made an agreement to talk about Sure. and ask the people to write in the names of Terry and Monica. If I'm elected vice president, I will do my best to get the things done that you feel and I feel should be changed. So vote for [Applause] [Music] [Applause] me. All right, let's keep the whistling and the yelling down, please. Your applause will be sufficient. Our next candidate for vice president of the student council is Tracy Wong. [Music] [Applause] Thank you, Mr. Langston, and thank you everybody. The first thing that I would like to say is that I'm up here as part of the sure slate, which stands for students. I want to make a couple of ground rules right here. I had hoped it wouldn't be necessary. Number one, there will be no campaigning for any candidate or slate except those officially nominated. I kind of got disgusted because well, I didn't think it was right. And plus, you know, I didn't know what to say next and I was wow. Is that clear to you? All right, you may proceed then. I don't think we can. Um I I There's nothing else I want to say. Thank you. [Applause] I was scared. Everybody knew I was the other person Mr. Langston was talking to. Our last candidate is candidate for president of the student council, Matt Cole. Matt. [Applause] I'm speaking softly. What I say I believe is right. I think it's wrong for them to forbid me to talk about Sure. Our candidates. Please just take your seat. [Applause] Quiet, please. All right. You have heard the speeches of all the candidates. You may have an opportunity to vote for the candidates of your choice this afternoon during sixhour class. Please do not vote for Matt Cole. Matt has disqualified himself. Do not waste your votes. This kid was so intent on ramrotting through this sure thing that he directly disobeyed me in front of the whole student body and disrupted the process of student elections. Now, if I let this go by, how am I supposed to run this school? Friend of mine who helped count the votes said I got a lot of votes anyway. And you got suspended? Yeah, for two days. Second, I think the suspension ought to be taken off Matt's record. I consider it very detrimental and substantially unfair to him. I'm not willing to do that. Matt is a responsible person and he did what he did. Mr. Langston, you forced Matt into a confrontation. No one forced Matt into anything. You forced him to back down on everything he stood for. I consider that a confrontation. Mrs. Cole, I'm not saying I did everything right here. I'm saying that what I did I believed was right. Now, if you wish, I'm willing to take the whole thing and put it before the school board. What if the school board decides against you? Well, I wouldn't feel very good about it. We would have to think out everything very carefully and decide if we want to take it any further. Yeah. If the school board decides that next year we'll have slates and platforms, I can live with that. Yeah. It would give us time to have orderly change. Would you do it all over again? Sure. Self incorporated was supported by a consortium of 35 educational [Music] agencies. This program was produced by KETC television St. Louis, Missouri under the supervision of AIT Agency for Instructional Television.