What started as a conversation among classmates at lunchtime eventually turned into an organized protest of school policies, which the students see as increasingly punitive.
In the halls, classrooms, cafeterias and other areas around Oak Park and River Forest High School, students have been sporting “OPRF Penitentiary” T-shirts since the start of the school year. Alek Pedersen, a senior and creator of the shirts, had never designed do-it-yourself, makeshift shirts before. But on a weekend, he and other friends were in his backyard hand-printing the shirts, about 90 in all.
Pedersen distributed the shirts the following school day, selling all but a handful and making about $700 in profit. The money, Pedersen says, was distributed among the friends who helped make the shirts, likely to go toward their college funds. The group also donated some of the money to OPRF’s track team. But the real goal, he says, was to make a statement against some of the recent policy changes at the high school, namely the new partially-closed campus policy.
“There’s some rules here that don’t really need to be changed, or can be changed in other ways without taking away liberties,” said Pedersen, who came up with the idea on the spur of the moment. The orange shirts with black lettering sold for $10-$12. Students wore them around campus that Monday, and some are still wearing them. In addition to the words “OPRF Penitentiary” on the front, the number 002012 appears on the back — 2012 being the seniors’ graduation year. Pedersen said the reaction from adults in the building was surprisingly positive; some teachers actually wanted to buy one.
“It started off as lunch table talk. There were people saying it feels like a jail and were talking about let’s wear jumpsuits or let’s make shirts that say OPRF Penitentiary,” he recalled.
In May, the District 200 school board agreed to close the campus, but not entirely.
Seniors, juniors and sophomores once enjoyed the privilege of leaving campus during lunchtime hours. While closing OPRF’s campus was not a new issue, the recent push was more intense, a year in the making, beginning in 2010 and spearheaded by parents as a way to deal with the school’s perceived drug and alcohol problem.
Juniors and seniors can leave under certain conditions, including having parent permission and incurring no F’s during the most recent four-week reporting period. Students can earn the privilege back after the next four-week cycle. School officials insist these changes are meant to help students improve their overall behavior.
But Pedersen thinks the changes are sending the wrong message to students. Along with the closed-campus policy, Pedersen says students also don’t like the new “10-minute” rule, where students are prohibited from leaving or entering their classroom during the first 10 minutes of the period — school officials say this rule is to prevent disruption as class begins.
“If they’re trying to get us to be more responsible, I don’t think they should be taking away our liberties; they should be giving us more freedom and help us try to learn responsibility instead of ‘Here’s how you should be responsible and we’re going to make you do it.'”