First Person: Involving Youth in Policy Decisions: Hats Off to Student Voices - Rural Roots, Volume 4, Number 2 (April 2003)

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Volume 4, No. 2
April 2003

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Rural Youth Take Action on School Funding and Facilities in Ohio

Resource Center

An Old School Is Given New Life

Rural Datebook

Students Successfully Fight School Closure in Alabama

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Involving Youth in Policy Decisions: Hats Off to Student Voices

Grants Watch

Youth Council: Youth Activism in Policy

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First Person
Involving Youth in Policy Decisions:
Hats Off to Student Voices

By Martha Jane Rich

It started with the hats. Twelve years ago when I came to Thetford Academy, a small Vermont high school, there was a rule that no students could wear hats in buildings. My predecessor in the principal's job had felt this was important for discipline. He'd established the prohibition, and it stayed on the books. I soon noticed that "discipline," at least with regard to headgear, was variable at best. The students I met in the hall would be properly bareheaded while greeting their new principal -- but if I turned around, I'd see the hat whip back on the head once I was safely past. Looking through classroom doors, I'd see some teachers presiding over hatless groups; other rooms were full of brim-shaded faces, hats firmly ensconced in the presence of unresisting teachers.

After a month or so, I issued my own edict in an all-school assembly. A rule was a rule, I said. If a policy was in place, everyone had to respect it. I'd therefore expect full compliance with the hat rule. But, I added, rules could be changed. If there were a rule that a lot of people disagreed with, we could talk about it. Then I waited -- but not for long.

Martha Jane Rich

A week later, a student petition arrived. Of all the appeals that have appeared on my desk through the years, this remains my favorite. "To the administration," it read, "We, the students of Thetford Academy, respectfully request our right to accessorize." It went on to propose a new rule, allowing adults to designate any classroom or other area as hat-free, but permitting hats in the halls, cafeteria, and other places students considered "our space." The petition had more than 200 signatures -- 80 percent of the student body -- including kids who wouldn't have dreamed of choosing a baseball cap or NASCAR hat as a fashion statement. It was really, of course, a petition about student voice, about whether kids in this school could be heard when they brought a proposal for change.

I took the hat petition through the proper channels. It generated hot debate in faculty meetings, and more at a meeting of the board. A trial period ensued, in which students demonstrated their ability to comply with the new regulation, including rehabilitating a few delinquent peers. Eventually, the student proposal was honored, took effect as policy the following year, and has remained in place ever since.

Among all the issues in the world or in a school that might need attention, caps are pretty trivial. Although I didn't say so at the time, I saw this hat business as a practice exercise. It was a perfect issue for paving the way to more significant policy decisions. Once students saw there was a process, we could get to work on other things that mattered to them. The message I hoped this experience conveyed was something like this: this is how things change. If you don't like something, you raise the question, you join the discussion, and you do the work to make it different. There are no guarantees in this process, but the process itself is important. Even more than the outcome, it's the quality of the conversation that matters.

Thelford Academy, Vermont's oldest secondary school

The next year, sure enough, another issue arose. This time it was the Student Council, proposing an "open campus" policy that would allow older students to leave school during unscheduled time, if their parents granted permission and they were strictly accountable for signing in and out. This proposal was deservedly controversial: it was about affording students control over their own time and -- in a rural setting where homes and stores are accessible only by driving -- their vehicles. In the end, after another period of intense debate and a successful trial, this too was adopted. Since then, as modifications in the Open Campus Policy have been needed, our board has routinely referred final approval to the Student Council, and the Council's decision stands.

Other policy decisions shaped by youth advocacy and participation have followed. Students serve as active, voting members on several board committees, including the one that writes the school's strategic plan every three years. Students initiated our course evaluation system, and helped restructure an ineffective school-wide reading program -- an effort that started, again, by petition. They don't always find support for their positions. Last year, graduating seniors appealed on behalf of a classmate who was barred from commencement ceremonies for a serious disciplinary violation. This time, lengthy discussion at faculty and board meetings upheld the original faculty decision, and the seniors marched without their friend.

Students studying in the library (notice the hat).

Some of those students and their parents could recall, however, a very different case a few years earlier: the matter of the weapons policy. Of all the policy decisions students have affected here, this is the one that most reflects the potential power of youth voices -- as well as the culture of rural schools. In the wake of federal Gun-Free Schools legislation, Vermont required all schools to adopt policies prohibiting weapons, with possible exceptions for "recreational firearms." At our school, where generations of teenagers had parked their hunting rifles in the office during deer season, this provision required serious attention. A teacher, Barbara Sorenson, offered to take on the issue as a topic for research with one of her classes. As a long-time champion of student voice, social justice, and rural culture, Sorenson had supported many earlier student efforts for change; I felt the issue would be in good hands. Her students' recommendations, however, came as a shock to many: they proposed a policy that would permit hunting rifles on campus, with an elaborate system of permissions and protections. Most of these students were not hunters. They felt, however, that it was critical to respect the cultural traditions and expertise of the few who were.

The faculty was nearly unanimously opposed to this plan; with school shootings on the rise around the country, they wanted to "just say no" to guns. The board, having heard both the students' and faculty's recommendations, turned to the administrative team: what did we think was best? Our four-member team wrestled with the problem for days, and decided, even given the faculty's strong objection, that student voice had to be paramount. We recommended the student policy. The board upheld its adoption.

As it turned out, there were no guns on campus that year. When deer season came, a few students inquired about the new regulations but decided they were too much trouble; they took their rifles home after an early morning in the woods. A year later, having had no patrons of the new policy, we reviewed it again. This time, with full agreement from students, faculty, administration, and the board, Thetford Academy became a completely gun-free school. This outcome served us all well, to be sure. Its most important lesson, though, was ultimately the one about process: it was the quality of the conversation that mattered most.

Martha Jane Rich is Head of School at Thetford Academy in Thetford, Vermont, a National Service-Learning Leader School and a member of the Vermont Rural Partnership. This year the Thetford Academy is also a Rural School and Community Trust site for Project 540, the student-led civic engagement initiative sponsored by Providence College and funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.