KGUN9’s Valerie Cavazos asked Clarrisa, “What do you hope happens today?” She answered, “I just hope it opens their eyes to see that it’s not wrong what we’re doing.” What they’re doing is participating in social justice — in the form of protests — as was taught in some of the ethnic studies classes.
(Originally posted in January 2012.)
The march by Cholla High School students reaches TUSD headquarters
Dozens of Cholla High School students hit the street in frustration to protest the end of Mexican American courses. The classes were suspended yesterday, but many of the students clearly did not like it. They went to their first class today, then met as a group at the school to talk about what they wanted to do. They decided to march to the district’s office.
At a brisk pace, students from Cholla High School walked about 4 and a half miles, with police escorts, to the District office. They chanted “Our education is under attack. What do we do? Fight back.” — not really knowing what to expect when they got there.
They wanted to be heard because they said they were confused about the change to drop the Mexican American studies courses after a judge and state superintendent John Huppenthal ruled it promoted racism. “If they’re saying they can’t teach us to be racist, they never did so we don’t know what we have to change. We’re confused, we don’t know what we did wrong,” said student Clarrisa Carrasco. “We learned a lot in our classes, we don’t know why they should take our classes away from us.” Even though principals and teachers, yesterday, delivered the message as to why the program was dropped.
On Wednesday Superintendent Dr. John Pedicone said he had hoped the students would understand. “We’re being prepared for the potentiality of certain actions to take place. We don’t expect that will happen.”
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