Blue and gold march on Walnut Hills: A history of student protests Tuesday, December 04, 2012 By Jonah Roth, ‘13 [ArticleImageHyperLink] Advertising On March 22, 2001, Walnut students skipped class with a purpose. A week earlier, the Chatterbox had published an issue containing a controversial opinion piece criticizing the administration for handing out Saturday schools. Alongside the article was a cartoon depicting assistant principal Gerald Houghton as the character “Two-Face.” The administration almost immediately suspended distribution of the Chatterbox. Principal Marvin Koenig met with Chatterbox staff, and over 125 non-Chatterbox Walnut students walked out of class at 1 p.m. on March 22, chanting things like “Bring back the box!” This, however, was far from the first time that Walnut Hills students have staged a protest, according to former principal Dr. David A. Shepherd. In fact, over his fifteen years as principal, he witnessed many protests by students. During teachers’ strikes in 1976 and 1978, “a number of students… walked out in support of the teachers” for multiple days. In 1980, when the district ran out of money and Walnut was closed for 28 days, students picketed, sitting down in Blair circle, in what Shepherd calls a “well-planned and well-organized” protest. In 1982, the district “attempted to get more work out of the teachers” by transitioning all schools to an eight-bell day. Only at Walnut Hills did students “pick up on the teachers’ upset” and walked out of school for over three days. When the teachers’ union re-negotiated a seven-bell day in 1988, students protested again over the reduction in course options. During this protest, the superintendent invited students to the auditorium, where he threatened administrative action—and they walked out on him. On November 2, 2005, long after Shepherd’s departure from Walnut Hills, over 100 students in the club Students Against War skipped their seventh bell in protest of the war in Iraq, chanting anti-war slogans and holding signs.  Koenig was quoted by the Cincinnati Enquirer saying that students who skipped class to protest on this occasion would receive a Friday school, the standard punishment for skipping. The administration also requested attendance lists for that bell from teachers. “I ignored the request for attendance lists because it was an unusual request,” social studies teacher Scott Grunder says, “and yes, also because I believe in the right to protest.” Grunder recalls other events, such as “little tombstones” placed in Blair circle to commemorate those who died in the war, students participating in a “moo-in” (where students sat on the steps moo-ing because they thought they were being treated like cattle when they were unable to eat lunch on the front steps) and a “sizeable group” attending Board of Education meetings to protest budget cuts. Would today’s Eagles react to unpopular decisions the same way? “I think most Walnut students would talk about some kind of protest,” says Sam Petersen, ‘16, “but mostly they would complain... or make jokes with their friends.” SENIOR Remington Hackbarth adds, “Many of the students would feel frightened... about repercussions from the office.”  Why are Walnut students so prone to protest? Shepherd says it is “because the students think! ...A lot of students [at other schools] succeed because they have learned how to ‘play school.’ [Walnut Hills] students and teachers don’t play by those rules...They’re smart enough to know there are other ways.”

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