A group of students staged a sit-in in the lower breezeway of South Portland High School last Friday, refusing to attend class in protest of the school’s suspension policy.

South Portland Superintendent Wendy Houlihan said the students were protesting what they considered unfair discipline of a particular student.

Students say they were protesting because suspensions are hastily and unjustly given out on a regular basis. And some parents agree.

“Administration responds according to the policies in the disciplinary code,” said Houlihan. According to the code, grounds for suspension include fighting, defiance, drugs, threatening, theft, harassment and others.

The protest that got the students riled up started out as a joke. Sophomore Dylan Leddy thought it would be funny to send a “valentine” to a girl he didn’t like. The “valentine” was a Necco candy heart that said “go home.”

Leddy said he never intended for the heart to reach the girl. It was supposed to be a joke among friends. He didn’t deliver it, but it got to her anyway, and then it made its way to the principal’s office, where Leddy soon found himself sitting.

His joke got him suspended. His act was considered harassment. Leddy’s suspension was the last straw for students. Two days later they staged a protest on his behalf. Kids were fed-up with what they considered unfair suspensions.

According to students, suspensions are doled out like milk cartons during lunchtime, and there is no distinction between harmful actions and bad judgment.

The protest was planned a few days in advance. Students knew to meet in the breezeway before the first block. They wore homemade t-shirts expressing their dislike for school policies and administration, which read, “Free Dylan and everyone else,” “End tyranny” and “SPHS administration-unjust unfair and unwise.”

Those were just a few of the mottos adopted by the crew of disgruntled, yet peaceful, protesters. One student depicted the school as a jail with bars on the windows and barbed wire around the building by drawing the image on a t-shirt.

Parents are concerned that the administration is taking a blanket approach to discipline and applying suspensions too liberally over the student body.

“If you do something detrimental, then, yeah, nobody wants you at the school, but if you do something stupid, there needs to be a different way to deal with those kids,” said Kim Preston, whose son, sophomore Brody Preston, helped organize the protest.

Paul Leddy, Dylan’s father, said though he supports the administration, he disagrees with their decision to suspend his son. “I was not in favor of a week’s suspension, or any suspension for that matter,” he said.

He surmises that schools today, like other businesses, are more worried about protecting themselves from litigation. As a contractor, he understands that practice. “Sometimes we’re building things to hold up in court more than the elements,” he said.

Leddy agrees with student assessments that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. “Instead of getting to the root of the problem, they seem to come down in one fell swoop with these broad suspensions,” he said.

Brody Preston said he was also suspended unjustly. Preston was suspended for five days after passing off an image of an M-16 toting Jesus to a kid sitting behind him on the bus. Beneath the Jesus, it said, “you’re already dead.”

The student who received the picture went to the administration. Preston was charged with criminal threatening.

“I just gave somebody a piece of paper. It was being passed around,” said Preston, who did not create the image.

Kim Preston acknowledges that her son didn’t make the best decision when he helped circulate the picture, but she feels the punishment was too severe. “He didn’t use his good judgment and they kicked him out for five days,” she said.

When his friend Leddy was suspended for the accidental valentine, Preston decided it was time to take some action. “We felt the administration was really harsh and illogical with their actions on disciplining kids… a lot of people thought it was about Dylan, but it was mostly about administration and how they deal with things,” said Preston.

Paul Leddy agrees the administration needs to make some changes in their policy. “It’s a little overzealous,” he said, “I hope they’ll be more open to adapting better policies that work better for everybody.”

By lunchtime, the protest was over. The school’s administration diffused the protest by blocking off the breezeway, which kept the protest from swelling. They also met with protest organizers several times to try and resolve the conflict.

Houlihan said the administration took an appropriate approach to diffuse the situation. “They dealt with it well. They offered for students to come and talk, which is just what should have happened,” she said.

Preston said they met with Principal Jeanne Crocker four or five times before dismantling their troops and returning to classes. Crocker, he said, seemed receptive to their concerns.

“She actually wrote down what we were saying,” he said.

Whether the protest was successful is still uncertain, said Preston, though he thinks the administration is beginning to understand their perspective. “We’re definitely getting our point across,” he said.

Leddy said his suspension was reduced from five to two days, but the impetus for that change is still unclear.

Leddy said the protest that caused another student to come forward in an admission of guilt for something that Leddy had previously been blamed for. Houlihan said it was not the protest that changed the suspension, but declined further comment.

Preston now wants the school’s administration to consider alternative forms of disciplinary action, rather than resorting to suspensions for what he considers trivial misconduct. He says keeping kids out school causes them to fall behind in their classes. “Out of school suspensions don’t help anybody,” he said.

Preston is fighting to eliminate all out of school suspensions except for more serious violations like fighting on school grounds. Preston plans to hold another protest within the month if “things don’t change,” he said.

Houlihan said the administration strives to include more student input school wide. “It wouldn’t surprise me if administration got students involved,” she said.

South Portland sophomore Brody Preston organized a sit-in, protesting unfair suspensions last Friday at the high school.Brody PrestonSophomore Brody Preston stands in front of South Portland High School where he spearheaded a protest last Friday.