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The Headphone Protest
In my senior year of high school, we got a controversial new principal. My graduating class actually managed to go through five principals in our short time in that school. And while a couple of them were only interim principals, the rapid succession still seemed to raise some questions. It wasn’t something that we deserved full blame for, but we could probably at least take partial credit.
When our fifth principal came into the school, she quickly introduced a draconian series of new policies. She imposed restrictions on everything from where we could eat our lunch to which stairways we could travel and in which directions. But her mortal mistake… was to ban headphones.
I’d spent my entire high school career savoring those few minutes I could listen to music in between classes. I’ll admit it was a small thing, but those brief intermissions were important for my sanity. Since before I could even carry a musical device in my pocket, I’d been bringing my music with me to school. Each day at recess in elementary school, I’d take the portable CD/Mp3 player out of a pocket in my backpack, the pocket that was designed especially for such devices. (Does anyone else remember those backpacks?)
We’d survived our entire public educations without ever being told to give up our music. To be suddenly banned from using our headphones just as so many of us were…
