Letter to the Editor

It has come to my attention that the Mount Baker Secondary School class of 2016 stands on the brink of a divide.

The school these students love, have grown up in, and that they have worked so hard to represent well, has been disloyal to them. A long loved tradition, both celebrating the graduates and the beautiful area they call home, has been taken from them without just cause.

The pre-prom tradition long held at St. Eugene Golf Resort and Casino has been slotted to move to Rotary Park in downtown Cranbrook for, as reported by nearly the entire class, no legitimate reason. Students are understandably upset as the tradition they waited so long to be a part of, the same one they watched their older brothers and sisters enjoy, is being taken away from them – and they can’t even get a straight answer as to why, let alone have their voices heard.

The lack of respect for the student body is what I find most disturbing here. If, for instance, the celebration was being moved due to legitimate safety concerns, it would be one thing and hopefully the students would be well informed as to why. However, according to students, they’ve been given nothing but ‘non-answers’. Some students were told that the venue was unavailable, yet when they took it upon themselves to look into it they were told that it was open and available to them since it has been a long standing tradition to host them at St. Eugene’s. At this point, not only are the graduating students’ voices not being heard, but they are not being given the respect of the truth.

I found it inspiring when I heard that the students organized and began a petition to submit to the principal of the school and to the pre-prom committee – a petition that garnered over 200 signatures. An incredible thing, isn’t it, that we are lucky enough to live in a country where we are afforded the Freedom of Assembly? Or so I thought. When students submitted a petition to the principal, they were told to give it up, pack it in, and accept it or they would be barred from attending their own prom.

What?

You may be thinking ‘oh come on, it’s just prom, relax’. But this is a pivotal moment in the lives of our young people, and having their right to assemble and organize threatened could crush any momentum they have to fight for change in the future on a much larger scale. That could be the lesson learned here, not that exercising their right to peaceful protest and respectful dialogue can institute real change for something they feel is right.

I graduated from Mount Baker. I loved my school and my teachers, and I’m a better person because of them. They encouraged me to push myself, to chase down my goals and to defend my beliefs. They held us up, not pushed us down. And they never bullied us into backing down on something that we were passionate about. What is happening now is not the Mount Baker I know, and it is not the Mount Baker I want the Class of 2016 to remember as they go forward.

Theirs in solidarity,

Delaney Kunitz, Historian to the Class of 2010,

Cranbrook/Victoria

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