They were demanding more funding for things like text-books, elective courses, heating and air costs and the ability for some schools to return to a five-day school week from the four-day weeks necessitated by a lack of funding. The protest was also for more substantial raises for themselves, a $10,000 increase rather than the $6,000 approved in Oklahoma Republican Gov. Mary Fallin’s school funding bill, as well as other school staff. This protest followed a similar walkout teachers held in West Virginia in March. That nine-day strike ended with a five percent raise, which made Oklahoma teachers hopeful that their demands may be met as well.

The bill Fallin signed allocates $50 million for schools and raising teacher and staff pay. This number is much lower than education professionals had asked for, so many districts effectively shut down as the statewide walkout began. The teachers used the walkout as a platform to promote two pieces of legislation to move their conditions closer to what they have demanded.

On Friday, April 6, the state Senate approved a bill amendment that would require third-party retailers using platforms like Amazon to collect sales tax or to inform buyers of their owed sales tax. This could mean an additional $20 million each year for education funding. However, teachers claim Oklahoma schools need $200 million over the next three years. The Senate also approved a gambling tax that would be effective long term, though it would not add to education funding this year. Teachers are urging Fallin to sign these into law.

These Senate actions are steps toward the teachers’ goals. However, the Senate also repealed a hotel and motel tax, effectively cutting $43 million from the education funding bill.  

Fallin equated the striking teachers to a “teenage kid that wants a better car.” She expressed frustration throughout the duration of the protests, blaming the teachers for not accepting the pared down version of their requests she had passed initially.  

In the Oklahoma walkout’s second day, it became a march, with over 100 teachers, parents, students and supporters beginning a 110-mile march from Tulsa to join those protesting at the capital in Oklahoma City. Teachers across the state have been posting photos on social media with the hashtag “#okleg” at the capital with fellow teachers, parents, students and other supporters.

Melinda Parks teaches Advanced Placement World History and Advanced Placement European History and is the senior class staff sponsor at Westmoore High School in Oklahoma City, where she has worked for 17 years. She is currently attending courses at the University of Oklahoma in pursuit of her doctorate in education.

Parks noted that since the first funding crisis for Oklahoma’s public education system about 15 years ago, the cuts have “just never stopped.”

“Some years, the cuts have been tougher than others,” said Parks. “Around 2008, we experienced a particularly bad round of cuts and then again when we had revenue failures the past couple of years. The past 12-18 months, the state’s revenue has increased, so education, as well as other core services, could feasibly benefit. There were several failed plans that were proposed that, while not perfect, would at least have gotten things moving in the right direction again.”

Because those proposed solutions were not ultimately implemented, the cuts continued, having a “terrible impact on morale” and driving many education professionals to leave the state or even to switch careers. Parks explained that Fallin’s $50 million bill is completely insufficient to fix this situation.

“A couple of weeks ago, a bill was passed, but it’s full of longterm problems and doesn’t even get us back to 2008 funding levels,” said Parks. “The inadequacies of this bill led to the walkout.”

Parks’ experience as part of this protest has been encouraging. She has joined other teachers, students and parents engaged in the democratic process in order to have their voices heard and promote a “productive dialogue.”

Parks cited her students and their educational experiences as her ultimate motivations for joining the walkout.

“My reason for walking is that my own students have never been in a fully funded classroom,” she said. “And when I say ‘fully funded,’ I mean by Oklahoma standards and not national standards. There are so many amazing things that we would like to be able to do as a district, but we can only afford absolute necessities—we deal in needs instead of wants. There are fabulous lessons that I would love to present to my students, but I cannot afford the materials to put an activity together. I have great students, and they deserve a better education than they are receiving.”

Photo Credits to Chris Landsberger, The Oklahoman.

Millhuff came across the open position while searching for jobs online and, after reading more about the job on the company website, she decided to apply. She will be using her chemistry background in medicinal research.

“Specifically, I will be working in a pharmaceutical group that is partnered with the National Cancer Institute, and is currently analyzing the efficacy of certain cancer drugs as well as testing for impurities,” said Millhuff.

Millhuff’s preparation during the application and interview process exemplify the uniquely personal relationships Jewell fosters between professors and students. She also explained another aspect of the College that is unusual in undergraduate education, and that is the ability of STEM students to undertake extensive and impressive research projects.

“My professors in the chemistry department were a big help with this process,” Millhuff said. “We met the day before my interview to practice and discuss how my experiences at Jewell helped me be a strong candidate. In the chemistry and biology departments especially, Jewell students have the opportunity to be involved in scientific research and work closely with professors and laboratory equipment, which is rare at most undergraduate institutions. Jewell students definitely have an advantage because of that.”

Millhuff plans to use this job as a productive gap-year project. This will keep her chemistry skills sharp as she prepares for medical school.

She looks forward to the chance to live closer to Kansas City’s downtown areas after leaving Jewell’s campus. Millhuff doesn’t see this as a long-term living situation, though. Eventually, she hopes to move somewhere with more opportunity for outdoor recreational activities.

Millhuff considers the full schedule typical of the Jewell student experience to have been both a large challenge and to have given her an advantage in the world as well as the workplace.

“One of the biggest, underrated advantages I’ve had at Jewell is being able to be a part of its community,” she said. “Working through rigorous coursework, as well as being a student-athlete and employed part-time, was not always easy for me and I know a lot of students can relate to that. But I was also always supported by classmates, teammates and professors who are what truly made this opportunity possible for me. I think being able to work collaboratively with others will always serve my future endeavors.”

Photo credits to Talia Zook. 

In explaining and emphasizing different aspects of my feminist agenda, I have often used the term “liberated” in referring to sexuality, employment choices, physical presentation and general social behavior. I have always considered sexual liberation to be a positive thing, a social shift that accepts women as having sexual desire as frequently and naturally as men do and (sometimes) accepting that there is nothing inappropriate in their acting on that desire. I thought of sexual liberation as something that allows all people to have safe and consensual sex without fear of sociopolitical punishment for that choice.

Benjamin Nolot’s 2017 documentary, “Liberated: The New Sexual Revolution,” acknowledges but critically challenges this understanding of contemporary sexual “freedom.” Yet, this is done in a thoughtful and nuanced way. The argument develops in a slow and subtle manner so that viewers are not forcefully told they are wrong and complicit in a problematic culture. Instead, the movie demonstrates how young people have been conditioned to perpetuate a dangerous and damaging sexual status quo.

The film begins with its sometimes-host introducing us to Panama City Beach during spring break. He meets and begins following a group of young Australian men who exemplify the hookup culture encouraged during this week of partying. The men explain that the point is to have sexual encounters with as many “girls” as possible during the week and to have them never spend the night so as to increase their nightly numbers. As far as these, and other interviewed young men, are concerned, that is how young women understand spring break, too.

A particularly shocking encounter in this section shows one of these men meeting a young woman alone in their hotel hallway. She explains that she’s not planning to have sex during the vacation because she doesn’t know anyone. Yet within five minutes, he has brought her into his room, given her a drink, kicked out his friends and locked the door, asking them to “give us five minutes.” She then walks out, embarrassed, and literally runs away from the laughing and gesturing group of men when she sees her friends walk by.

Sections of this nature are interspersed by with interviews by different psychological and sociological professionals. These discussions focus on conventional conceptions of masculinity, femininity and sexuality. While the entire movie is striking and effective, the content and placement of these interviews is the most impressive and nuanced aspect. A common critique of discussions about rape culture is that men are generalized and demonized as a homogeneous unit. This critique is unavailable to viewers of “Liberated.” These experts explain that men are socialized to view losing their virginity, and subsequently having as many sexual conquests about which to brag, as quickly as possible in order to maintain their value among other men. Here, there are cuts back to the film crew during spring break. Men in their 20s, alone with the interviewers, explain how much pressure they felt to have sex and not to care about it.

The experts next turn to socially enforced ideas of what it means to be a woman. They explain that through popular music and television, young girls are taught to want to become sexy women as soon as possible. Here, college-aged women on spring break explain the pressure they feel to allow men to touch them, to dance sexually and to undress whenever asked in this environment of drinking and hyper-sexualization. Tellingly, though, all the interviewees explained that these pressures are constant in everyday contexts, too. The message that you have to be beautiful in a certain way, and that your reward is being a prized sexual object, is persistent and consistent.

The final section is the most horrifying. There is about a 20-minute collage of cellphone videos showing women’s bikinis being ripped off, their bodies being picked up and grabbed, their objections being ignored and their fears being laughed at. At one point, two men pick a woman up by her legs, spreading them, and then members group of men proceed to force their fingers into her, all the while chanting “Pussy!” in an almost ritualistic circle around her. She is screaming “Help me!” the entire time.

This documentary is important because it does not exaggerate reenactments or scandalize one-time occurrences of irresponsible drunken behavior. Almost all of the non-interview footage is clearly coming from cellphone videos of spring breakers themselves. These videos show forcibly sexual behavior happening en masse, and the real young people exemplify the damaging results of social pressures to which the experts allude. No one group is demonized or attacked. The documentary does not argue that men are monsters creating rape culture. Instead, they are socialized to think that treating women as disposable bodies is what they must do to be proper men. In the same way, women are told to be “cool” and uncaring about sex and to find value in others’ appreciation of their bodies.

The first criticism I have of this movie comes from a review I saw online. The reviewer claimed that the filmmakers are wrong in their claim that this is normal behavior and that spring break is a special circumstance, that this kind of thinking and acting by college-aged people is concentrated into this one week of irresponsibility. I do not agree with this review. In fact, I find it quite naïve and rather defensive. But it points to a weakness in the documentary. I wish they had obtained footage at college parties or even just along bar-lined streets on a weekend night. This would show that unwanted and aggressive sexual advances, grabbing and hyper-masculinity are the norm, not the exception. This somewhat touches a connected criticism, and that is the film’s failure to reach an intersectional conversation of sexual assault. For example, the very underreported sexual assault of trans women is not at all mentioned. However, I realize that a PCB spring break is not the most diverse sample from which to draw.

My other full criticism of this film is also, I think, a major strength. I felt a constant and growing discomfort the entire time I was watching. I gave myself a stomach ache because of how tense my body became. This was not just in the second half when assault was the clear topic. This began in the first scene when the Australian man said he knew how to convince drunk women into his bed. I was in tears for the last 10 minutes of “Liberated,” and I continued to cry for about 20 minutes after it ended. This movie refuses to sugarcoat how disgusting and inhumane the normalized treatment of women’s bodies is.

Cover photo courtesy of PopSugar.

“We just didn’t talk to each other, I don’t know. We didn’t, our friend groups didn’t mesh, I think, so we just missed each other,” said Alpert.  

“But we had two classes together, back-to-back,” said Stevenson.

“We sat in the room alone together but just didn’t talk,” said Alpert.  

Now that they’re roomies, they’ve found lots of joint activities and interests to make up for lost time.

“We watch ‘Pride and Prejudice’ at least once a month, because it’s both of our favorite movie,” said Alpert.

“Maybe more,” Stevenson admitted.

They also share clothes and recently ordered matching socks and watches. They vibe together so well that they hope to live together again in the future. However, directly following graduation, Alpert has a summer internship at a wild bird sanctuary in Wisconsin, and Stevenson is staying in Kansas City. She is supportive of her roommate, though.

“[Her internship] is gonna be awesome, and she’s gonna kill it. There’re eagles there, and owls. She’s gonna take care of eagles and owls. EAGLES.”

This hasn’t kept her from planning their future reunion, though.

“We’ve both talked about applying to [University of Washington] for grad school and then living together in Seattle.”

The roommates have greatly valued the relationships they’ve cultivated at William Jewell College and hope that this can be a more widespread sentiment for future students. Alpert explained her favorite thing about Jewell.

“I guess the general community around, that I’ve had. But I know that’s not the same for everybody. But that’s something that could also change. Stay the same, but get better.”

Stevenson echoed the sentiment.

“I wish more people—I think that if everyone, if you have to live on campus, if everyone did every event, I think that would be cool. I think that we could make all the events really fun if everyone came. Like imagine if 500 people came to every event. Can you imagine?”

Photos by Christina Kirk.