Dear Editor:

Tomorrow (Friday, March 6), some Boothbay Region High School students will serve a two-hour detention, from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m., in the BRHS cafeteria.

These students were marked “absent unexcused” Friday, Feb. 27, when, after the School Spirit Challenge assembly at 8 a.m., they chose to participate in a sit-in in order to honor their teachers who are working without a current contract.

Confusion exists as to what went on from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. last Friday at BRHS.

On some level, I can clarify by saying, different students made different choices. While 80 students chose to participate in the “sit-in,” other students chose to go to their classes anyway, and we teachers continued to teach those students. Many students who did not want to sit-in, however, apparently assumed there would be no teaching for the rest of the day, so they chose to depart school after arranging “excused absences.”

I have seen Facebook posts linked to the WCSH6 video and text story, for example, in which some adults have assumed that members of the Boothbay Region Educators Association prompted students to protest and that such involvement of students with the teachers’ ongoing contract impasse is inappropriate.

I can say, unequivocally, that I had no part in fomenting the sit-in, and to my knowledge, no BREA member did. 

Furthermore, this BREA member and others are not suggesting that there should be no consequence. To the contrary, when a citizen commits civil disobedience, he or she expects that there will be a consequence.

While I know that this letter does not reflect all BREA members’ views, I also know that many of us wish to thank publicly the students who chose to honor teachers in a time-honored tradition and who choose to take responsibility for their choices tomorrow by serving the two-hour detention.

We applaud and respect your choices to “stand up” for your beliefs by “sitting in.”

Thank you, students!

Mark Gorey

Instructor of English at BRHS

President of the BREA