Rachel’s Rebel Roots

Rachel’s Rebel Roots

RAB with FDR in Washington Square Park 6/16/16

I went to Washington Square Park to hear why Rachel Barnhart is running for the New York State Assembly. But also to get the story of her “underground” newspaper The Marshall Message (1993).The Message and its saga — a snapshot of Rachel at 17 — offers a small picture into the woman Rachel would become.

rachel darkened better

Rachel said she’d climb the monument if she had appropriate shoes 6/16/16 [Photo: John, WSP lunch time regular]

Having given up her television position to run for office, Rachel is pursuing her lifelong passion for public service and social justice.

Fundamentally, Rachel believes she brings to the job the skills and mindset honed in her career as investigative and activist journalist, especially through her personal blog, The Rochesterian. To get the facts right and to uncover what’s really at stake in an issue. And — when appropriate — to take a stand, as seen recently in A Threat To Local Media and SUNY Poly Folly.

Right now, we are not endorsing Rachel or her opponent in the primary, Harry Bronson, who has served ably as a State Legislator. We’ll let the voters decide.

But for someone who started his own magazine (and published the ill-fated Weekly Wiffle News at Brighton High School), the story of an underground student newspaper 23 years ago is compelling.

RB 3

4/8/93

Controversies aside, Rachel’s creation of the Message itself is admirable. In 1993, Marshall did not have a student newspaper or literary magazine.

Apparently, the newspaper — authored by another student John Campbell in Rachel’s suspended absence — was read widely thoughout the school, perhaps the first time students saw the power of the press up close: peers exercising their free speech rights. And, according to Rachel, 100 or so of those students exercised their own free speech rights by taping copies of the newspapers to their clothes.

In brief, for a couple of years, Rachel, who graduated from Marshall in 1994, had represented student’s views at school-based planning sessions. One of Rachel’s biggest issues was what she felt was the overuse of suspensions. In a D & C Speaking Out Reader Essay “What’s wrong at Marshall High” (12/92), Rachel argued that excessive suspensions — Marshall had the most in the district — can generate more violence, even stating  — provocative but not invalid:

Many students perceive the beating up of white students to be their only means of recognition, their only way to get someone to listen.

During the 1992-93 school year, Marshall Principal Richard Wallman was under increasing pressure based on Marshall’s poor overall outcomes. Rachel would choose to draw more attention to student views on suspensions by writing and circulating within the school, The Marshall Message, produced on her home computer, habitually running out of printing toner. Rachel believed the views she expressed on behalf of students at the school-based planning sessions were falling on deaf ears.

what's wrong with Marshall

12/27/92

The newspaper was a big hit with many students as evidenced by the hundred or so who pinned it to themselves, who were themselves threatened with suspensions for “disruptiveness.”

As described by D & C‘s Lee Krenis More in “Marshall Law,” what followed was a complicated back and forth between Wallman and the newspaper writers as to how they could gain his approval. Wallman had the right to ban inappropriate student publications distributed on the Marshall campus.

In the process, Rachel was suspended for 5 days, later lowered to 4 days by Superintendent Manuel Rivera. As a telling example of the complex racial world of the school, Wallman said one of his concerns was that a black student complained that a white girl, Rachel, was defying school rules and not getting punished.

RB 1

6/4/93

Looking back, the controversy no doubt would play differently in the digital age. Rachel’s newspaper would be online and hence accessible outside school. In 1993, Rachel’s other option was to make the newspaper available somewhere outside school grounds. But — then

thumbs down

6/5/93

as now — the best way to spread the news is bringing it directly to the masses, in this case the school cafeteria and the hallways of Marshall.

Ultimately, Wallman would leave Marshall for medical reasons and not return; there is no way to know how much his handling of The Message was a factor. Later — as reported in the D & C — Rachel was nominated for the National Honor Society but voted down by the Marshall faculty. The D & C also gave a Thumbs Down on the decision.

By her 1994 graduation, Rachel was “rehabilated” — or better — had proved her point. As Valedictorian, she gave a Farewell Address (reprinted in the D & C). The Address did not mention The Message.

What I said 20 years ago

June 1994

Reflecting back 20 years, Rachel says of her address:

I’m not sure I could have given a different speech, though 20 years later, there are some things I wish I could add. I would add that the experiences we had were not the fault of individuals running our schools, but a broken system. I would add that I had some wonderful teachers; I didn’t score highly on my Regents and AP exams without their support. I would have said thank you to my parents.

My teenage self was talking about educational inequality, though there was much about it I had yet to learn. I knew something wasn’t right about my school. Watching so much human potential go unrealized remains a very painful memory.

What would 17-year-olds say today?

Rachel was not without her detractors. Although, she says of David: We’re cool now 🙂

About The Author

dkramer3@naz.edu

Welcome to Talker of the Town! My name is David Kramer. I have a Ph.D in English and teach at Keuka College. I am a former and still active Fellow at the Nazareth College Center for Public History and a Storyteller in Residence at the SmallMatters Institute. Over the years, I have taught at Monroe Community College, the Rochester Institute of Technology and St. John Fisher College. I have published numerous Guest Essays, Letters, Book Reviews and Opinion pieces in The New York Times, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Buffalo News, the Rochester Patriot, the Providence Journal, the Providence Business News, the Brown Alumni Magazine, the New London Day, the Boston Herald, the Messenger Post Newspapers, the Wedge, the Empty Closet, the CITY, Lake Affect Magazine and Brighton Connections. My poetry appears in The Criterion: An International Journal in English and Rundenalia and my academic writing in War, Literature and the Arts and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Starting in February 2013, I wrote for three Democratic and Chronicle  blogs, "Make City Schools Better," "Unite Rochester," and the "Editorial Board." When my tenure at the D & C  ended, I wanted to continue conversations first begun there. And start new ones.  So we created this new space, Talker of the Town, where all are invited to join. I don’t like to say these posts are “mine.” Very few of them are the sole product of my sometimes overheated imagination. Instead, I call them partnerships and collaborations. Or as they say in education, “peer group work.” Talker of the Town might better be Talkers of the Town. The blog won’t thrive without your leads, text, pictures, ideas, facebook shares, tweets, comments and criticisms.

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