By Cody Fitzgerald
Campus News
Last week, on February 10th, a group of Ballston Spa, NY, juniors and seniors paraded into their high school maskless, harassing other students, chanting and “exercising their freedoms.” Today, I am going to exercise mine and talk about how and why this was so dangerous, and what it means going forward.
On all technicalities, these students are only a year or two younger than me, so I could in good conscience go all in on one of my long uber political pro-mask tangents, and that’d work, but I want to do something different today, and that is to try and nip this “we’re being oppressed” narrative in the bud, because it is wrong and it is vile. You being asked to wear a piece of cloth on your face is not the same as being genocided because of your race, getting shot by a police officer because of your skin color, getting denied equal pay because of your gender, not being able to participate in everyday activities because of your gender identity or not being able to get married because of who you love. YOU ARE NOT OPPRESSED.
I try to be funny in these columns and, I like to think at least, that I usually am. Today I’m going to make an attempt, but put bluntly, I’m pissed. If you’d asked me the day of, I’d be saying I want to publicize every student that participated’s name and desired college, hoping those schools would see it and reevaluate their decision. I would tell you that these kids should be expelled. I want to be the bigger person. I’m not going to bash these students, and I’m not going to rant about masks. You all know how I feel, I trust the science, not what Facebook or Tucker Carlson has to say once he hits puberty. I’m writing this to hone in the message above and how disgusting I think it is that students, parents or ANYONE think that the situation we are in right now is at all comparable to slavery, the Holocaust, or anything else.
I’m not going to use names or give out any specific details, equally out of respect and what I would assume is legal obligation, but I’ve heard numerous accounts of students comparing themselves to civil rights activists or saying that they are glad this happened during Black History Month, because this white student feels as though they though are doing work equivalent to that of Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks. When students were sent to the library, they complained that they were being segregated. This is a failure of the United States educational system, and something that needs to be seriously looked at going into the future.
People have been beaten, battered, brushed, chained, murdered because of who they are, and that is the real discrimination we are seeing, and that’s just on the surface. The microaggressions and systemic issues that have been built into the system in this country ARE in the Constitution which, ironically, seemingly has no mention of “no citizen shall, in time of epidemic, be required to endure a brow covering.”
To see the copious amounts of parents, or anyone, online praising these kids for “fighting the good fight,” or “standing up for their rights,” proves to me that we have a serious lack of understanding in this country of what it means to have your rights taken away, and the closest thing these people will ever see to that is getting thrown in Facebook jail for a few hours (which, to clarify, is still light years away from what real oppression looks like).
I want to end this by doing what is one of these student’s worst nightmares, and completely turn the attention away from them. If you are/know a teacher reading this, I want to direct your attention to the Black History Month website, or if you’ll be so bold and type in a full web address, https://blackhistorymonth.gov/for-teachers/. This website has tons of material for teachers to bring into the classroom for Black History Month (and beyond, please) and teach students about the true stories and history of black culture and oppression of the black community in the United States and even outside our borders. Essentially, you’re teaching Critical Race Theory without saying it and attracting every Republican within 5 miles a la turning on a lamp in July and getting swarmed by mosquitoes. Even if you’re not a teacher, please take the time to read up on these materials and educate yourself, which is something everyone, including myself, needs to do.
Cody Fitzgerald is a 2021 Schuylerville High School grad satirizing anything and everything he can get his hands on. Aspiring to become “one of the cool” High School English teachers, he now attends Siena College and hopes to share this outlook/coping mechanism with future generations.
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