• In support of the walkouts, the media giant Viacom said that its networks, including MTV, BET, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, will “suspend regularly scheduled programming for 17 minutes” when 10 a.m. occurs in each time zone and that students will take over MTV’s social media accounts during the protests.
Many will protest in places haunted by violence.
Some of the day’s most poignant demonstrations could happen at schools whose names are synonymous with shootings.
In Colorado, students at Columbine High School will leave their classrooms and begin 30 seconds of silence: 17 for the dead in Parkland and 13 for the dead on their own campus in the shooting that seemed to signify the beginning of a generation of school attacks.
Students from two nearby high schools will also walk out in solidarity.
Sam Craig, 15, a lead organizer and a student at one of the area’s high schools, said he was pushed to act after watching the videos coming out of Parkland.
“We saw people in classrooms just like ours, wearing clothes just like ours, they looked like they could have been any one of us at any of our schools,” he said. “And seeing them lying in pools of blood was really powerful for us.”
Walkouts are also expected in Newtown, Conn., where 26 people were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. The district’s interim superintendent, Lorrie Rodrigue, said this month that school officials had “worked closely with student leaders to create a time for respectful student expression,” according to school board minutes. Dr. Rodrigue said she viewed the protests as an extension of social studies classes.
And in Parkland, students at Stoneman Douglas High are expected to hold their own walkout at 10 a.m. A few hours later, the suspect in the rampage there, Nikolas Cruz, is expected to appear in court.
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Not all districts are treating walkouts the same way.
Although some school districts have openly accommodated the protests, others have warned that they will discipline students who participate by marking them as absent or even suspending them.
“We cannot condone students leaving classes during the instructional day to participate in this activity,” said Barbara P. Canavan, the schools superintendent in Harford County, Md., who said that the protest “presents, paradoxically, a threat to student safety, as word of the walkout has been widely disseminated and students who go outside could become more vulnerable.”
Instead, Ms. Canavan said, her district would offer “a learning module that will provide students with an opportunity to share their feelings about recent events across the nation and will allow them to speak about solutions in a structured way.”
In Muscogee County, Ga., administrators arranged a video conference between students and state lawmakers but warned of “immediate disciplinary action” against students who participated in “unapproved exercises,” such as a walkout.
Noelle Ellerson Ng, associate executive director for policy and advocacy for AASA, the association of the nation’s superintendents, said that schools had to balance the First Amendment rights of students with their other responsibilities, including safety.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has offered training to students planning to participate in the walkouts, said that districts can discipline students under attendance guidelines, but cannot “discipline you more harshly because of the political nature of or the message behind your action.” Many colleges, meanwhile, have said that high school students disciplined for protesting will not have it counted against them when they apply for admission.
Officials in Lafayette Parish, La., initially said that students could participate in the walkout, believing that it would honor the Florida victims, but when it became clear there was a political undercurrent, a wave of outrage from the public led the school board to adopt a new plan: a minute of silence.
Jeremy Hidalgo, the school board’s vice president, said that parents were frustrated by plans to use 17 minutes of class time for anything beyond the traditional curriculum and that they “were just disgusted and disappointed that we were going to participate in a national walkout that was geared around gun control.”
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He expected some students to demonstrate anyway.
And in many high schools, 10 a.m. may pass without anyone getting up from their chairs.
Ronald S. Saari, the district administrator in Potosi, Wis., said he did not anticipate any walkouts there. “We believe that because we are rural, there is a different perspective than the highly publicized gun violence narrative we see in most of the media,” he said in an email. “Comments we have heard have been, ‘Why would people want to go outside of the school, to protest, when there can be some nut out there who could shoot at students?’”
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By NEETI UPADHYE on Publish Date February 24, 2018.
We asked students across the country who planned to participate why they were doing so. Here are some of their responses:
“Seventeen people are dead and I am no longer willing to listen to politicians who deem my life less valuable than a piece of metal.” — Maya Homan, Palo Alto, Calif.
“On Wednesday, we plan to say the name, age and story of each of the victims, followed by a moment of silence. We’re doing this so that the students and faculty that were killed are not just remembered as numbers, but as people. Also, most people at my school feel separated from these tragedies, so giving them background information on the victims could help them feel more connected.” — Jessica Burg, Westchester County, N.Y.
“I am walking out of school on Wednesday because our president and Congress need to do more than just tweet prayers and thoughts.” — Beyoncé Brown, Philadelphia
“Students don’t get to voice their opinion very often and it’s thrilling to be one of the millions across the United States who will have that option. The students at Stoneman Douglas who have spoken out and become activists are incredibly inspiring.” — Katie Cummins, Louisville, Ky.
How young is too young for children to join the protests?
Elise Cappella, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at New York University’s Steinhardt School, said there was a difference between what the youngest students — from kindergarten to second grade — and older children could understand about the walkout. While not advocating any particular stance, she said: “Schools could make the decision that kids in kindergarten through second grade are not provided the opportunity to walk out. They are cognitively, socially, emotionally younger. They may feel more fear about it and less understanding.”
Children in the third grade and up, she said, will be more likely to be exposed to news and hear their parents talking about it. “They are reaching a point where having something that’s potentially positive and productive to do that makes them feel a sense of agency and safety could be a good thing,” she said.
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Ms. Cappella said that whether elementary schools decided to participate in the protest or not, the goal should be to project a sense of community to their students.
“And if you can create that space,” she said, “whether that’s in the classroom or in the hallways or in the schoolyard or out at a protest or a march, that’s the most beneficial space for young kids to be in.”
Official Washington was still processing the surprise announcement that President Trump intends to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. With Tuesday’s announcement that CIA Director Mike Pompeo has been nominated to replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, a new foreign policy team will face added challenges in the lead-up to the proposed meeting with North Korea.
The nature of diplomacy provides reasons for pessimism. Here are five reasons why.
1) Face-to-face diplomacy requires a lot of preparation — by others
Even presidents who fancy themselves foreign policy presidents — Richard Nixon, for example — leave the nitty gritty of diplomacy to others. Presidents can actively engage their foreign policy advisers, make official visits abroad and develop strong personal relationships with foreign leaders.
They can’t do all the legwork international diplomacy requires. Nixon knew that, and relied on his subordinates. Despite his suspiciousness of Henry Kissinger — who served as national security adviser and then secretary of state — Nixon allowed Kissinger significant maneuvering room in foreign negotiations.
Kissinger did the secret advance work for Nixon’s 1972 trip to China. Kissinger then helped choreograph the trip — he started negotiating the final communiqué even before China extended a formal invitation to Nixon to come to Beijing. To quote Kissinger, “to leave communiqué drafting for the actual visit is to court disaster.”
Nixon is hardly the exception. Most secretaries of state travel far more often than the presidents they serve. Consider the busy flight schedules for Kissinger and John Kerry, each of whom served under a president who actively traveled abroad. Moreover, as Elizabeth Saunders and I show in a recently published paper, when secretaries of state travel, they tend to do the “rounds.” Much of their travel involves return visits to a relatively small number of countries, which serve as key diplomatic interlocutors.
The question, now, of course, is whether Trump will have a well-prepared team to make a trip to the Korean peninsula work. As it is, Trump does not put a high premium on consultation. His quick acceptance of North Korea’s invitation for a meeting blindsided his advisers, including Tillerson, who was then traveling in Africa. Pompeo will be coming into this position cold, without the full range of connections and experience to run interference for a presidential meeting with a foreign leader.
2) Diplomacy has a learning curve
An administration’s diplomatic engagement changes over time. Consequently, secretarial travel patterns tend to differ between a first and a second term. My recent study shows that in most two-term administrations, secretaries of state traveled just as frequently in the second term — but tended to restrict their trips to focus on countries linked directly to longstanding U.S. security goals. The learning curve affects presidents, too. Barack Obama offered soaring rhetoric in early speeches in Prague and Cairo. Like his predecessors, he eventually pursued a more traditional foreign policy.
Trump’s aspirations in North Korea might reflect more than a bit of naïve ambition and misdirected effort. Trump’s goal for the meeting — a denuclearized North Korea — is laudable. Still, is a meeting, now, the best way to accomplish it? With a turnover in key personnel, including the secretary of state, the learning curve promises to be steep.
3)Skilled diplomats — not presidents — work out the deals in advance
Face-to-face diplomacy between a U.S. president and a foreign adversary is a rare event, and the agenda is usually modest — on purpose.
We might think of such talks or a summit as a “business meeting” when leaders finally settle their differences. Trump, who often talks about himself as a dealmaker, may see them that way, too.
But presidents sign deals that foreign policy professionals spend months — or years — negotiating. Even in a meeting with a longtime ally, the issues can be complex, the differences between parties are often great, and the challenges of implementation are many.
The odds for a North Korea deal are long. The State Department will have a new leader at the helm; the department has hemorrhaged seasoned personnel, and the administration doesn’t have an ambassador to South Korea. This means that the networks and knowledge that could avoid pitfalls in negotiations just aren’t in place.
4) Presidential face time is a scarce commodity
A face-to-face meeting carries symbolic weight, as a scarce resource, and loses value quickly through overuse. Indeed, it might hold value only when used the first time. North Korea has repeatedly sought face time with a U.S. president. Once a North Korean leader secures that goal, the United States will have played what is perhaps its most important card.
5) Not all talks are helpful
We should never assume that talking “does no harm.” Presidents must recognize dangers in injecting themselves directly into diplomacy before conditions for intervention are ripe.
True, even summit failures can produce breakthroughs — consider the 1986 Reykjavik summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. The collapse of the talks spurred efforts to bridge the divide, and led soon to a major nuclear arms control treaty.
But Kim is not Gorbachev — and sometimes failure is just that. Bill Clinton’s 2000 attempt at Camp David to bring Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to agreement was such a failure. Talking can lead to shouting, which can lead to violence — in this case, the second Intifada.
Unfortunately, the signs today point to a limited outcome, or even a setback, given the great distance between the U.S. and North Korean negotiating positions. The parties assuredly differ on the terms of “denuclearization,” and perhaps whether it would bind the United States, no less than North Korea.
As I show in a study of the Iran negotiations, parties bring to negotiations certain assumptions about the adversary’s intentions — and these assumptions shape whether an agreement will live or die. The fact that new personnel will now bring new assumptions to the table will add to the obstacles blocking an agreement with North Korea.
James H. Lebovic is professor of political science and international affairs at The George Washington University.
