STAND UP ... AND WALK OUT >>>

South Puget Spound Community College student Kendall Brookhart and other students will walk out of class Monday, Nov. 28 in protest of the special session and proposed budgets aimed at education. The "Student Walkout" will have several "rally points" that Monday: 10 a.m. at South Puget Sound Community College's Student Union Building and The Evergreen State College's Red Square, and 11 a.m. at Heritage Park in Olympia.

Below is Brookhart's plea for others to join the student walkout.

Myself and several other students are planning a student walkout for Monday, November the 28th.

This is a planned action. This is a conscious decision. This is not a day to stay home and sit on the couch. This is a response to the opening of the Special Session on Capitol Hill, which has proposed severe budgets aimed specifically at our Education.

The proposed cuts would result in larger classes. This is a problem because as the number of students in a class grows, the ability for teachers to cater to and communicate with each individual student lessens. Larger classes also means fewer overall classes; so registration just became that much more difficult.

Fewer programs would be offered under the new budget cuts. Running Start would no longer be free, or even terminated all together. Services for exchange and international students, including those for students just learning English, are vulnerable.

Tuition will rise. These fewer, more crowded classes of lesser quality will cost you more money. Financial aid will suffer. Qualifications for receiving financial aid are going to become stricter, and the amount of people able to receive assistance will diminish.

Teachers' jobs are threatened. They are liable to be laid off en masse around the entire state. These budget cuts will take jobs away from our teachers, creating a circular effect again increasing classes sizes and work loads for those lucky enough to remain employed.

Education for everyone is essential to any democratic society, and lately that belief has been kept at an arms length for most of us. Education has become a privilege for the few, no longer the right of all. This unfortunate, yet designed consequence of our current system is no longer tolerable.  We plan to walk out, in solidarity with the Occupiers all over the world, in a physical demonstration of the strength of the people and our ability, as students, to stand up for our education and ourselves. On the 28th of November we will walk out of our classrooms in order to better defend our classrooms, and our fellow students and teachers whom also depend upon them. JOIN US AS WE WALK OUT to restore the precedent of participation in our own lives.