On March 15, over 2,000 events were held in over 100 different countries to raise awareness about the changing climate. Students walked out of their schools in cities including San Francisco, London, Cape Town and New Delhi with a common goal: to demand action.

In Chicago, the Youth Climate Strike held the event. According to their website, the Youth Climate Strike is protesting “for the Green New Deal, for a fair and just transition to a 100% renewable economy, and for ending the creation of additional fossil fuel infrastructure.” Additionally, the organization believes “the climate crisis should be declared a national emergency.”

The Green New Deal aims at transitioning the country away from fossil fuels, decreasing the use of carbon in agriculture, transportation and infrastructure, and aiming to make the economy carbon free within ten years, according to the Washington Post.

Two days before the walkout, Dean of Student Life Christian Bielizna informed the school via email that participating students would receive an unexcused absence. “To alleviate any confusion,” the email read, “please know that students who choose to participate will have their attendance recorded as an unexcused absence.”

Undeterred by the consequence, Senior Bella Evan-Cook was one of the 500 students citywide who walked out of school to attend the Youth Climate Strike in Chicago. Strikers such as Evan-Cook met at Grant Park and marched to Federal Plaza, where students and adults alike gave speeches and read poems.

Evan-Cook believes the benefits of attending the Strike outweighed the risks. “I’m okay [of the unexcused absence] if it is in support of something much larger than my one point off of a percentage grade,” Evan-Cook said regarding the unexcused absence.

“If students choose as they do in any other day to do something that isn’t school when school is in session, they are effectively not going to school,” Bielizna said when asked for reasoning behind the unexcused absence.

The decision was not taken lightly. “It becomes tricky,” Bielizna said. “We want to be supportive of the things that are mission aligned, students that are looking to be apart of an active democracy, but there’s the other side to it–– we are in school that day, the expectation is that the student comes to school.”

Evan-Cook said the possibility of an unexcused absence had an effect on the Parker student turn out. “It had deterred people, because when I talked to people about it they ask ‘oh, will I get an unexcused,’” Evan-Cook said. “They immediately think they will get an excused because they are doing something for social justice.”

Environmental Committee Heads senior Will Holtz and juniors Molly Taylor and Claire Levin all chose to forgo the Strike because of the possibility of an unexcused absence. Holtz called the absence “unfair.”

Levin agrees. “The school makes room for other types of activism and likes to be self-congratulatory about things like the gun control walk out day,” Levin said. “But then this wasn’t supported by the administration. That’s problematic.”

Regarding attendance matters, for the Walkout day that occured last March, students were marked unexcused with a note saying “walkout.” “If that absence became significant in some way for a student,” Bielizna said, “we would factor in the fact that it was the walkout day, and that could be taken into account.”

The special measure was due to the school’s involvement in the protest. Since the school is unaffiliated with the Strike, however, it is unclear whether students like Evan-Cook would be getting a note indicating “strike” next to their unexcused.

After reading Bielizna’s email, Taylor was left confused.“It just didn’t explain why,” Taylor said. “The email seemed like it was completely against the entire walkout, rather than explaining, ‘we encourage you to take action.’”

Holtz, Taylor, and Levin unanimously agreed they would have participated if they’d been excused from school.

A few faculty and staff members reached out to Evan-Cook to applaud her efforts. Assistant to the Principal Sarah Butterfield reached out to Evan-Cook via email. “I wanted to encourage her personally in her activity because I think that it’s kind of sad that as a community we don’t care more about the environment,” Butterfield said. “At Parker, I think we can be doing a lot more, in terms of recycling and other things.”

Butterfield understands the unexcused absence. “It’s not for the school to be making political statements about what political actions students should or should not be engaged in during the day,” Butterfield said.

Bielizna sees a universal attendance policy regarding issues of social justice taking form in the future. “I see more and more marches and protests on the horizon,” Bielizna said, “so then it’s developing the appropriate policy to both support the students, and also say, institutionally, this is what we are doing on this day.”