Highland Park High School - Little Giant Yearbook (Highland Park, IL)

Page 8 text:

Positive action ... learning and togetherness Students put forth positive efforts to enrich school life. Senate publicity committee organ- ized several highly successful dramatic produc- tions and lectures in an effort to boost the school's cultural life and stimulate student participation. Senate and SOPE (Students Organized for Pro- gressive Education) sponsored an in-school sympo- sium entitled, Does Anyone Care About this High School? Team-teaching room MW211 was half-full of students attending a series of seminars on Teachers' Role in School Government and Writ- ten Evaluation as an Alternative to Grades. Others, too, made a conscious effort to build enthusiasm and unity. Learning Project members, smaller in number than last year, worked for a better atmosphere within their group. Not only did they meet daily, they also got together off campus. For example, each member taught his gourmet specialty at weekly cooking classes. Learning Project also made an effort to maintain contact with many faculty members.

Page 10 text:

Indifference ... temporary or permanent? Organized activity was lacking, however, in student government and politics. Senior option, liberalized dress codes, and lounging privi- leges, the acquisition of which required student action during the two previous years, became established facts of life at HPHS. Having gained this much, student leaders seemed to have lost sight of the initial motivation for demanding change: dissatisfaction with second-class status and a desire to revamp the decision-making pro- cess. Hallway strikes, the underground newspaper Thrush, and an overabundance of over obstin- acy, characteristics of recent activism, faded quietly into the woodwork. Having received some freedoms from District 113, dissenters forgot that the struggle had been for the right to designate their own freedoms, rather than accept what the administration was willing to grant. 6