City 400 Detentions Issued at Seattle Prep in One Day?!?
After the morning prayer at Seattle Prep on Friday, the school’s popular Dean of Students Jim Flies (pronounced fleece) came on the public address system and warned students not to ditch class.
The administration had gotten word the students were planning a walk out—organized, in part, via a flurry of text messages—to protest the school’s rumored decision earlier that week to demote Flies. (The rumor is that Flies was offered a job as the IS guy.) The students had circulated a petition earlier in the week, signed by about 400 of the 600 plus students at Prep, voicing support for Flies as dean.
To the students, the rumored decision about Mr. Flies was symbolic of a trend at Prep this year under the school’s brand new principal, Father Tyrrell, to de-prioritize student voices and concerns—and to get tougher about issuing detentions (or JUGs, Judgment Under God). (One student says the hostile trend began right away at the beginning of the school year when the administration tried to institute silly stuff like a new dress code barring students from wearing clothing that revealed the collarbone.)
Flies is popular among students for being fair and open minded. Students believe the administration wants to replace him with someone who is more of a cut and dry disciplinarian. Earlier in the week, when Prep’s board of trustees was reportedly meeting during the school day to discuss Flies’s status, 400 students donned neon orange or green index cards—stringing the cards around their necks—emblazoned with Mr. Flies’s name and either a quote from Seattle Prep’s mission statement (quotes about creating a community of dignity and respect) or one of the Jesuit proverbs from the school handbook. The students believed the Jesuit sayings reflected Mr. Flies’s nature—and thus, reflected the hypocrisy of the administration’s reported decision to remove him as dean of students.
“We ran out [of the cards]. Everyone wanted one,” one of the two seniors who stayed up the night before making the impromptu neon protest gear reports.
At 8 O’clock, shortly after Mr. Flies’s plea that students stay in class, another voice came over the intercom. A couple of students had surreptitiously commandeered the public address system. “The Walk Out is Still On at 8:30!”
Then at 8:30, the student voices came on the P.A. once again: “The time is now. Stand up for what you believe in. Don’t let your voice be silenced.”
About 400 students walked out of class and congregated in the central plaza of the campus where students, anyone who wanted to, gave speeches using a megaphone. Several speakers demanded that Father Tyrrell come out and talk to the crowd. (Flies was there at the start of the rally and asked everyone to return to class. Although, one student reports he wasn’t too forceful about it.)
When Father Tyrrell came out and told the students to go back inside he was met with a resounding “no” from the group. He was, according to the students, forced to meet with a group of about five juniors who were identified as the leaders of the walk out. Against Father Tyrrell’s wishes, the crowd of students remained in the plaza while he met with the leaders. The students said they would decide to return to class or not—once they heard a report from the student leaders on how the meeting had gone.
About two hours later, after Father Tyrrell’s meeting with the student leaders concluded, the juniors reported that Father Tyrrell had committed to further dialogue about honoring and respecting student concerns.
The students returned to class.
In reference to the negative reaction she encountered from some Prep teachers, one senior who helped organize the protests said: “It’s really hypocritical. For the past four years I’ve been told to stand up for what I believe in. And the minute I do, there’s this backlash.”
“There was a JUG list for about 400 kids,” another student reports. The detention list was about 15 pages long.
Father Tyrrell announced later, however, that the students who took part in the walk out did not have detention.
*There’ll be a more detailed report on the Prep walk out in next week’s paper. I have calls out to the administration and hope to talk to them on Monday.
thank you for covering an event like this. young people usually only get in the media for crashing a car after binge drinking, not standing up and making educated and well thought out decisions to protest. Music for America hearts the Stranger!