![SNAP HAPPY Recording on a GoPro for social media, senior Sam Mellon has recently started a weekly sports podcast. “[Senior] Brendan Feeney and I have been talking about doing a sports podcast forever. We love talking about sports and we just grabbed [senior] Will Hanas and went along with it,” Mellon said.](https://mhsnews.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/sam-892x1200.png)
In 2018, students put together a rally in the fieldhouse titled “March for our Lives.” It served as a structured way to protest against school shootings. In doing this, students were able to make a statement and call attention to the risks of gun violence.
Seven years later, students wished to perform a walkout in order to protest against increased ICE activity. As a counteroffer to leaving the building, administrators allowed students to follow the same guidelines from 2018 in hopes that it would convey the same message in a way that ensured student safety.
Instead of an opportunity to facilitate a safe and structured rally, however, chaos and confusion surged among students and staff at MHS. Some students walked out of the building, while others rallied in the fieldhouse; some even gathered in the commons with extremely high tensions.
So, what happened this time that made the same concept go so wrong?
To put it simply, trying to repeat the same thing the “March for our Lives” protest accomplished with such a polarizing political issue was misguided. The student body was contained in the fieldhouse where they couldn’t voice their views to anyone beyond school grounds: this made protestors feel demeaned, as if they were given the illusion of freedom.
The issue of ICE raids is a completely different concept to the problem of school shootings; specifically, ICE raids are a significantly more controversial and convoluted topic. For this protest, the administration should have instead focused on educating students and creating an environment based on structured debate and freedom of assembly. A much bigger impact could have been made if it weren’t for the simplification of an extremely complicated issue.
Administration attempted to prioritize undisrupted education and safety in their method of organization; however, the close proximity of students led to potentially unsafe circumstances, and the amount of students suspended after the fact negatively impacted learning time and attendance. In the future, these faults should be taken into account for any future student-led events.
