The Protest (As told by the Winnetka Greaser)

Today, at New Trier West, Rev. Meeks and nearly 2,000 protesters came over, along with a few media trucks. In the parking lot across the street from the school early in the morning, FOX News had set up TV cameras by the road, and a blond-haired woman from FOX was getting ready to report. Their truck was parked alongside my motorcycle,* and right nearby was an ABC news truck. I found out that many students, when being hounded by FOX or ABC, (CBS would come later on in the day) would walk past the reporters without saying a word. Because of a story about a girl over at the Winnetka campus who told the reporters something that they ended up changing to make her sound more like the stereotypical "Winnetkan," Many students were afraid that by talking to reporters, they were vulnerable to be smeared by the news. Some students' parents, however, kept their kids home from school because of protesters, which I didn't think was rational because the protesters were just kids their age, some younger or older, but only by a few years. Just because they were from the city, do parents have the right to envision them as dangerous gangsters? Anyway, the kids and parents protesting went into the Cornhog auditorium and into the gym in the F building to try and register, which they knew they couldn't actually do, though registration tables were set up and administrative staff were running registration booths. The registrations were meant to be symbolic; they were meant to draw the attention that not everyone could go to New Trier, though it was a well-funded school. When walking outside to get to different classes in the buildings, students would occasionally see CPS (Chicago Public School) students that were protesting; students could tell who was a protester because most of the kids and adults wore orange shirts. The New Trier kids and the CPS kids, like with the reporters, didn't talk or stare at one another, but some New Trier kids would wave to the kids protesting, and some would wave back. Later on in the day, Meeks and the protesters left the Freshman campus to have their rally. Meanwhile, at New Trier West, students were back to talking about who was dating who and what kind of iphone everyone had. However, the protest was not completely forgotten. The freshman from Northfield campus still had had a normal day in spite of everything, yet, once again, students may not yet quite understand how much of a difference a bigger fund means to a school on the south side of Chicago, or in the city itself. If the fair funding issue was taken more seriously than it is at New Trier, and if students could get an even better understanding of how important equal education is, and if New Trier did more to get most students involved, than students would be able to help other schools, and see this as a big issue, like they would healthcare, or global warming. Look at how different a school like New Trier(Left of the page) is than a school like DuSable was (Right of the page). (DuSable spent only 7,000 per student.) I'm not saying that New Trier is this blessed place, or that it should be the only one supplying other poorly funded schools. The Illinois Government is the place that should be adressing the issue, which is what Rev. Meeks intended. Students at New Trier should help the Government realize this as well.