Kids paid for lunch with pennies to protest the short lunch period. In return, the school administrators gave the students 2 days detention for causing a disturbance and disrespecting the cafeteria staff.
Apparently, the cafeteria workers felt disrespected by having to count pennies.
Allow me to show them true disrespect, so in the future, they may know the difference.
"Ladies, had you stayed in school and gotten an education, your self respect might not be so fragile."
Ok, that is disrespect.
As I see it, the kids conducted a legal transaction using legal currency, and for that, they are getting punished.
Yes, it inconvenienced the cafeteria workers, and the other students who didn't have time to eat, but then again, wasn't the point of the protest to point out how short the lunch periods were? Just how effective is a protest that doesn't inconvenience anyone? If you create a protest that can be ignored, it will be ignored. The whole point of a protest is to draw attention to a problem and the kids certainly did that.
And had they broken school rules during that protest, then they should be punished. But they broke no rules.
This is a pretty clear case of a school administration getting caught by surprise and lashing out at the kids responsible for embarrassing him.
Had it been my child, and the school had tried to discipline them for paying in pennies, I'd have been in the office the next morning, paying every one of the school fees in pennies and demanding a receipt.
Incidentally, here's the funniest line in the whole story:
Each student brought in 200 pennies. Multiply that by 29 you get close to 5,800 pennies.
Only close?
Apparently basic competency in math is not required at UC Santa Barbara or the Columbia University Masters Program for Journalism.
I would be fighting back if I was the parent of one of those students. The students broke no rules. I'm sure the cafeteria workers didn't sit and count all those pennies right then either. I can remember having to take a bag of pennies as a child and it wasn't any protest. Would they have expelled me too?
Posted by: Cathy on March 3, 2008 9:52 AMWell here you have it..a comment froma cafeteria lady her self. And i for one have to agree..if that had been my child and they tried to punish him for using pennies I for one would have paid all his fines the rest of the year with pennies. Just goes to show that people in the authority position are jerks. Let the kids pay with what ever they want as long as it is legal tender. Maybe if some of the teachers would take time to make sure the kids knew how to actually count money that would help too......
Posted by: kellie on March 5, 2008 2:57 PM