19 Action News|Cleveland, OH|Breaking News, Weather, ExclusivesToday's students expect to have voice

CLEVELAND (AP) - In Hudson, students recently walked out of high school to criticize the firing of a popular principal, a protest that ended with police using pepper spray to calm some in the large crowd.

In Cuyahoga Falls, 200 students left class last week to voice displeasure about teacher layoffs.

"It's our education, and if they expect us to get it, they have to give us some say over how we get it," said Nicolle Hansen, an 18-year-old junior at Cuyahoga Falls High School who walked out last week.

Some experts say that in this Internet, cable-TV driven age, students across the nation are speaking up and making an impact, a difference from some more silent generations past.

"Because their voices are heard in media and politics, there's an expectation they will be heard in all other institutions," said Linda Waldron, an assistant sociology professor who studies youth culture and education at Christopher Newport University in Virginia.

In Massachusetts, student outcries in Boston got the attention of the governor and halted the deportation of a high school teacher. A Vermont school board recently bowed to student protests and renewed the contract of a teacher it planned to let go.

Last month in Hudson, about 400 students walked out in support of principal Roger Howard, whose contract was not renewed for what the school board repeatedly has said were confidential reasons.

Police used pepper spray to break up that protest. After that, large groups of parents and students attended board meetings to contest the decision. Students created a Web site devoted to the cause that outlined their stand. They started producing T-shirts, bumper stickers and a set of "talking points."

Last Monday, more than 200 people packed a high school library for a last-ditch effort to save the principal's job. The board was unmoved and several students, many of whom had just turned 18, vowed to oust their elected officials in the next election.

"We talked to the board for a good two hours, and five minutes later they unanimously voted not to renew his contract," said Jeff Lee, a Hudson High senior. "They just did it then and there. They showed no signs of considering our opinion."

Hudson school board members have insisted they have always heard students out. Students sit on board committees and even interviewed Howard before he was hired.

However, some of the recent efforts went too far, said board member Bruce Hubach.

"The thing too many people lose track of is that once students are put on a bus or delivered to our front door, until the time they leave the property, we're responsible for them," Hubach said.

Student activism was at a high point in the 1960s and '70s, when 18-year-olds won the right to vote and the Supreme Court upheld the right of protesters to wear black armbands in school to protest the Vietnam War.

But students' political rights dipped in the 1980s after courts gave administrators the right to quash controversial school newspaper articles and other forms of expression, said Jamin Raskin, a law professor at American University's Washington College of Law.

Today, technology lets students bypass those restrictions, Raskin said.

Stories about teen pregnancy that don't make the school newspaper appear online. Students size up educators at ratemyteacher.com and chatter about life in online journals known as blogs.

Also, there are more teenagers than any other time in American history, so it's hard to ignore them, Waldron said.

Retailers court them because teens spent $169 billion last year, according to Teenage Research Unlimited, a youth research firm in Chicago. Teen haven MTV waged a "Choose or Lose" campaign to promote political activism and voting.

"In a way, they have so much information. They have grown up accustomed to challenging what they read, challenging what they see and challenging what they find," said Michael Wood, vice president of Teenage Research Unlimited. "It's inherent to this life stage, which is a dramatic switch from the past."