Post-Occupation: Students learn from Occupy event

POLSON — Polson high school students took to the Lake County Courthouse lawn Jan. 2-4, bringing a form of the Occupy Movement, which has swept the country, to the Mission Valley. Directed against the cutting of federal aid for college students, protestors braved the chilly temperatures and the controversial nature of what they stood for.

“I thought the protest unfolded well,” Peregrine Frissell, one of the event organizers, said. “We had a consistent group of supporters that came back every day, and we had many members from the community stop by and talk to us every day as well. It stayed fairly consistent, so we were happy with that aspect.”

Students and some of their parents held signs during the protest in an area of Polson that receives plenty of through traffic. They stayed until 10 p.m. on the first night, respecting the city’s wish not to create a precedent for camping out on the courthouse lawn. In stark contrast to the national occupy events, students worked with local government to ensure everything was peaceful and went smoothly.

The cold was perhaps the biggest thing for the students to overcome. Stageline Pizza donated food to the kids while they sat out in the cold and several cars drove by honking.

“The movement went the best on the first day, and got progressively harder,” Riley Lemm, one of the event organizers said. “The cold weather made for very cold toes, and we moved around a lot to keep warm, The second day was windy, which made it hard to have posters up.”

The subject matter differed from that of the broader Occupy Movement, and was perhaps more focused and targeted. Seeing high tuition rates and financial aid getting axed by the government, students were hoping to get a message across that the costs of furthering one’s education are causing too much financial strain.

“We are looking for a way to make higher education feasible for all, not just those who can afford the skyrocketing tuition,” Frissell said. “Times are not the same as they were 60 years ago, or indeed even 10 years ago.”

Numerous people came up to the students and talked to them about the issues, and according to the organizers, it was exactly what they had hoped would happen.

“People coming up and talking to us was absolutely the best thing about the protest, negative or positive,” Frissell said. “I was happy that we had the opportunity to take the time to talk to so many people all throughout the protest, it was definitely the best part. Obviously, we had things that we learned from people that came up and spoke with us, and we appreciated it all, but I also felt like we had ample opportunity to educate them as well, because many of them did not know what was going on with this particular issue.”

Among the people coming up and talking with them were Legislators Joe Read and Carmine Mowbray, who talked with the students and offered solutions to the issue of financial aid. However, some people who said these students were just looking for the government to pay their way through college were points of contention among the protesters.

“The most common thing that we had people ask us was ‘why are you looking for a government handout for college? I had to work my way through college, why can’t you do the same?’ This was extremely frustrating,” Frissell said. “People still didn’t seem to understand that this option is no longer feasible.”

Mowbray wrote a letter to the editor of the Lake County Leader, citing a way students could make up the cut in financial aid by getting a part time job over the summer. It was a solution that Frissell didn’t agree with.

“There are many problems that make this the wrong answer, and chief among them is the fact that many kids do work,” Frissell said. “Fifteen days, although it sounds small, is the equivalent of three weeks, or about a third of our summer vacation. The problem isn’t working for the period of time, the problem is that many kids, including myself and, as far as I know, everyone at that protest, do work full-time all summer long, and there is still this extreme deficit. Another three weeks simply are not available for us to work.”

Frissell also cited a poor economy and the lack of jobs available to students as a reason why that solution is not the answer.

“Working to fully pay for college is not possible,” Frissell said. “People act as if we want a government handout to pay for our entire college education but that is not so. It is important to understand that the maximum amount you could get for a Pell Grant was around $5,000, and about the cheapest option around for us is the University of Montana at around $18,000 a year. Many schools range all the way to about $50,000 a year.”

While the protest is now over, the students are still looking for ways to get the word out about the plight of higher education cost. They’re happy with the way that the Occupy Polson event went, and feel like they’ve learned a lot about politics.

“I think that the toughest part of putting this on was all of the planning involved, meeting with the county commissioners, and sending letters and info to all of the local newspapers, and making sure that we got our point across as well as we could so that people understood what we were doing,” Frissell said. “We felt a large challenge was trying to make it so that people would actually look at us respectfully and think about what we were saying, rather than just writing us off because we were just a bunch of kids. We had trouble with that all the way through the protest.”