Teacher Punished for Questioning Anti-Gun Walkout

By Selwyn Duke

A California teacher questioned Wednesday’s national anti-gun school walkout — then found herself in the cross hairs, being told not to come to work that day at all.

The story began last week when Julianne Benzel, a history teacher at Rocklin High School in Rocklin, California, questioned the double standard reflected in the protest. She stated that it was wrong for the school to support one walkout if they weren’t willing to support those associated with other causes, such as one against prenatal infanticide (she used the common term “abortion”).

Benzel’s young charges didn’t disagree. “I didn’t get any backlash from my students,” she said. “All my students totally understood that there could not be a double standard,” related CBS Sacramento. But her school was a different story. As CBS also reported, “Benzel received a letter from her human resources department, informing her she was being placed on paid administrative leave.”

Benzel explained that she didn’t discourage her students from participating in the protests, but only questioned the aforementioned double standard and advised the high schoolers to discuss the issue at home. Nonetheless, school officials justified their actions, claiming they received “complaints.” As Fox News Insider reports, “The school district’s chief of communications and community engagement, Diana Capra, said in a statement: ‘The teacher was not penalized or placed on leave based on her viewpoints…. The district can clarify that the action was taken due to complaints from parents and students involving the teacher’s communications regarding … the student-led remembrance activities.’”

Of course, there’s an obvious lie in the last sentence. The walkout wasn’t a “remembrance” activity; that’s a euphemism, and often reflects self-deception. It was an anti-gun protest.

Benzel says she was targeted and put the district’s claims in perspective, saying that there were only two pupils and one parent who complained — out of her 120 students. The more common sentiment, according to Benzel, would be that presented by student Nick Wade, who not only didn’t walk out but echoed the teacher.

As CBS further informed, “‘I feel like if we were to go to school and say something like I want to walk out maybe for abortion rights [he clearly meant “unborn babies’ rights”], then you know they probably would not let us because that is more of a conservative push. But someone wants to say let us walk out for gun control then the school is going to go with it because it is more of a popular view,’ said Wade.”

As for views, the school is apparently taking a different one now that Benzel’s story has gone viral. Officials said they wanted the issue “swept up” (under the carpet?) and Benzel to return to work today, but she took a mental-health day instead and intends to return Monday.

Unsurprisingly, Rocklin High’s bias in favor of Wednesday’s leftist protest is the norm, not the exception. For example, “Video has emerged of the principal at New Praque [sic], Minnesota’s New Prague High School allegedly removing a student from a group of walkout participants because the student was holding a pro-gun sign,” reports Breitbart.

“The student’s sign said, ‘Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People.’”

Moreover, Breitbart continues, “New Prague High School student Kenny McDonald put up a Facebook post alleging that the student was not only made to walk away from those participating in the walkout for gun control but was also threatened with being placed in a police car. The post contains a video which shows the student with a pro-gun sign being forced to leave the demonstration”:

Of course, this certainly throws into question the notion that these are “student-led protests.” After all, there seems to be little adult tolerance for students who lead in a politically incorrect direction.

Then there is Hilliard Davidson High School senior Jacob Shoemaker, in Hilliard, Ohio. He was suspended from school because he “did not want to pick sides in the contentious gun debate surrounding Wednesday’s ‘National Walkout,’ so he stayed in class instead of joining the largely anti-gun protest or an alternative “study hall,” reports IJR.com.

In fairness, it’s hard to assign blame here based on this information. Was the “study hall” a neutral alternative or akin to a punishment, designed to coerce students into attending the protest? Having said this, it may be that Shoemaker was engaging in his own protest — of the anti-gun affair — as he says he’s prepared to accept the consequences of his actions.

Lastly from the Student-led Protest File, we have a NYC teacher who called in to the show Real News with David Knight and reported that her whole school was forced to participate in the walkout (video below). As InfoWars wrote, “The caller says her school’s principal is running a fire drill during the protest so all students and faculty will be forced out of the building, which is the perfect photo op.”

Of course, this entire gun-control effort is orchestrated by adults, with money and Machiavellian manipulation, who are using the kids as human props….

Read the rest here. 

http://www.selwynduke.com” target=”_blank”Selwyn Duke is a writer, columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show and has been a featured guest more than 50 times on the award-winning Michael Savage Show. His work has appeared in Pat Buchanan’s magazine The American Conservative, at WorldNetDaily.com and he writes regularly for The New American