A history teacher at a California high school who dared to question her school’s participating in the hyper-political pro-gun control National School Walkout has been placed on leave.
Julianne Benzel said she opened up a discussion in her classroom about the politics of the protest and was subsequently told to stay home on Wednesday because the administration disagreed with her views.
“We had a dialogue in class about it in Thursday and Friday. And today I received the call. So I am aghast,” Benzel told CBS13.
The Rocklin High School teacher highlighted the obvious doubled standard from the administration concerning the walkout. Benzel explained that if the school supports a walkout for gun control, they must support walkouts for nearly all other issues, too.
“If you’re going to allow students to walk up and get out of class without penalty, then you have to allow any group of students that wants to protest,” she said.
Illustrating the doubled standard, Benzel said she told the class, “And so I just kind of used the example which I know it’s really controversial, but I know it was the best example I thought of at the time — a group of students nationwide, or even locally, decided ‘I want to walk out of school for 17 minutes and go in the quad area and protest abortion,’ would that be allowed by our administration?”
Additionally, Benzel maintains that she never discouraged any students from participating in the walkout.
The history teacher says she hasn’t received any backlash from students or parents and was not even talked to about the lecture from administration; she was simply informed via a letter from human resources that she was placed on paid administrative leave.
“I didn’t get any backlash from my students. All my students totally understood that there could not be a double standard,” she said.
One student who agrees with Mrs. Benzel chose not to participate in the walkout.
“I feel like if we were to go to school and say something like, ‘I want to walk out maybe for abortion rights,’ then you know they probably wouldn’t let us because that’s more of a conservative push. But someone wants to say, ‘let’s walk out for gun control,’ then the school’s going to go with it because it’s more of a popular view,” Nick Wade told CBS13.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for the district claimed parents and students complained about Benzel.
“A Rocklin High School teacher has been placed on paid administrative leave due to several complaints from parents and students involving the teacher’s communications regarding today’s student-led civic engagement activities,” the statement read.
According to CBS13, “Benzel says she has retained legal counsel and plans to sit down with school administrators Thursday morning.”
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