Aptos High student protest gets out of hand
Saturday February 01, 2003APTOS, Calif. (AP) Hundreds of Aptos High School students, including some who had been studying civil disobedience, walked out of school Friday morning to protest the fact they can't leave campus for lunch.
``I'm a student, not a prisoner,'' said one protester, James Pea, 16.
Some students blocked roads when the protest began around 7:30 a.m., but by noon only 20 of the 200 protesters remained, according to Santa Cruz County sheriff's spokesman Kim Allyn. The rest walked off campus or returned to class.
``You know how much this is costing us? About $2,000 an hour and it has been going on all morning,'' Allyn said. ``Too bad they are not taxpayers right now.''
Some of the students who walked out of school are enrolled in a class that had studied civil disobedience Monday, including Gandhi and Henry David Thoreau.
The teacher, Bob Rosengard, said he has been teaching the topic at the school for 30 years, and a protest has never been the result.
Twenty deputies were dispatched to monitor the protest and the department had to call in other deputies to cover service calls, Allyn said.
Allyn said deputies issued several citations for trespassing and released the students to their parents.
Some protesters complained about the quality of the lunches as much as the requirement that students stay on campus to eat.
``There is an obesity problem in the United States, and they are doing nothing about it,'' said Reina Fleck, 15. ``We have burritos, pizza, chips and doughnuts. The healthiest thing here is a salad.''
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