Photo via @sav.bag/TikTok
September 29, 2021, 1:46 pm
Students in Idaho’s Jefferson School District 251 have found an innovative and fun way to protest a recent backpack ban implemented in four of their schools following the discovery of a gun in the backpack of a 13-year-old student (she did not use it or even point it at anyone).
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The schools have asked students to simply carry their books from class to class and store the unneeded ones in their lockers as though that has ever worked as an alternative to backpack use since every class started issuing thick textbooks.
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Anyone who has ever been to public schools knows that you have to get lucky to get a locker in a convenient place relative to your classes to be able to even think of forgoing a backpack as the time between classes is rarely more than five or 10 minutes. If your school is bigger than your average Denny’s restaurant, this can make it impossible to go from class to locker to the next class and avoid getting in trouble for being tardy.
Exasperated students, many frustrated at the failure of adults to protect them from the ever-growing threat of school shootings while continuing to implement increasingly annoying and utterly ineffective measures, have started bringing laundry hampers and toy wagons or strollers to school instead.
TikTok videos show teens with shopping carts, wheeled coolers, popcorn machines, organizer carts, and one incredible kid with a sled tethered with a rope around their waist.
Many of these solution-oriented individuals have been caught on video by Savannah Bagley of Rigby High School and shared on TikTok to the amusement of millions.
These amazing kids trying to live through a world ruined by adults highlights the absurdity of U.S. failure to stop mass shootings and general gun violence. Not too long ago, there was serious concern about the physical damage being done to young bodies by forcing them to carry around six or more textbooks on their backs because they had no other choice.
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Now, because we can’t have any semblance of gun control in this country, these Idaho students are apparently expected to carry six or more textbooks in their arms, to the bus stop or on their walk all the way to school and back—along with all the other supplies they need. (Apparently we can ban backpacks, but waiting periods and gun ownership registries are a bridge too far.)
In a press release announcing the backpack ban, the school district offered no alternative solutions to carrying books and supplies other than just carry them, somehow.
“Students are being asked to carry their books to the school and place them in their lockers,” reports KSL.com. “Teachers and administrators are planning to assist students where needed.”
It remains unclear what the school board thought was going to happen as a result of this policy change.
*First Published: September 29, 2021, 1:46 pm
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