Walkouts on tightrope with school officials

The walkout in schools across the state and nation Wednesday will provide a memory bookmark that students will revisit for the rest of their lives.

For many, it will truly represent a day of radicalism.

For most, it was a chance to honor the dead and raise voices in unity for sensible gun legislation.

And for some, it was lesson that rebellion should not be facilitated.

Greenwich High School hosted the walkout that wasn’t a walkout. The district’s first misstep was to lock out the media. It served to hush students. The reasoning, which was somewhat fluid, had something to do with security, which never seems to be an issue the rest of the year when journalists cover students on basketball courts and swimming pools and at school plays.

Even more disquieting was that the event was hosted by administrators, with an introduction by Headmaster Chris Winters and a tone-deaf encouragement to keep things moving because they only had 17 minutes, one for each life lost at the Parkland, Fla., high school shooting a month earlier.

School officials have reason to be wary of the media, both social and traditional. Norwich Technical High School administrators flip-flopped on a decision to suspend students for walking out during a “walk in” after it gained appropriate attention and outrage.

Winters wasn’t the only school official to grab the steering wheel. Stamford Schools Superintendent Earl Kim did the same. These may have been efforts to show solidarity, but they came across as attempts to control the message.

Norwalk High School students rebelled against a ceremony on the football field by straying for an independent protest.

“I thought the whole point of this movement was for it to be created by students,” senior Diana Acosta said. “Students are supposed to make this, and they’re taking away our voice.”

These students said they were threatened with suspensions in advance, which did not discourage 100 of them.

Students spent those 17 minutes in several ways. In West Haven, pairs of students read the names of the Parkland victims while surrounded by a semicircle of classmates. In Newtown, where 26 students and educators were killed in a 2012 massacre, high school students held a second rally that evening at the nearby National Shooting Sports Foundation.

Throughout the state, there were students who did not participate at all, whether to defend their own beliefs about gun rights or to protest facilitated rebellion.

Greenwich didn’t get everything wrong. They did pledge to host voter registration for students through the rest of the year.

In Bethel, the school-sponsored assembly inspired about 100 students to branch off with an unsanctioned march around campus. Afterward, several headed to the municipal center to meet with the town’s first selectman.

One of those students, senior Madison Lemone, used that time wisely by registering to vote.

It’s one way students who are at least 18 can ensure their voices will not be hushed. Their activism, continuing March 24 with a National March for Our Lives and April 20 with another National Walk Out Day, is encouraging.

These students aren’t just making memories, they are embracing the opportunity to change history.