Would the city of New Haven move a high school to a prominent downtown location only to bar its students from hanging around the neighborhood? According to a cluster of students at Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School, or “Co-op,” school policies that require parental permission to stay downtown after school are enforcing just that rule. While school officials maintain that the policy is for the students’ safety, a group of high-schoolers took to protesting on the New Haven Green last Fri., Sept 26 to defend their right to be downtown.

Despite the controversy that they have sparked, the schools’ policies when viewed alone seem unremarkable. Dating from before Co-op moved to its conveniently-situated College Street location, the school rules state that students must have their parents or guardians sign a permission slip for the student to stay downtown rather than head home on a school bus. Many Co-op students take advantage of the chance to stay downtown with parental permission in order to frequent the New Haven Green, the public library, local businesses, and maybe even scope out the Old Campus scene. But for some families, knowing their student must get on the school bus home may be essential—Co-op is an Interdistrict magnet school, so some of its half a thousand students commute to school from well outside Downtown New Haven.

Yet dozens of Co-op students and Yale student allies assert that these policies are not only inconvenient but also discriminatory or even unconstitutional. Many of the protesters believe that the rule is blatantly racist, since it attempts to keep a predominantly Black and Latino student population away from central New Haven. Other students cited the rule as unfair because the students often stay downtown because they have jobs—how can they be independent enough to work but not to go to work without parental permission?

It was out of these concerns that a protest of about 30 gathered on the Green last week, exercising their freedom to assemble. It’s no country prep-school campus, but for inner-city high school kids, it is the closest thing.

By Joanna Linzer