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TI: What other rules that were instituted or...

HM: Well they had, because the faculty was so variable, shall we say, and a lot of the teachers were so unchallenged [Chuckles] because of their previous background with the BIA, they weren't very competent teachers, especially the Caucasian ones. So in my case, I refused to go to some of those classes because it was just a waste of time and I wouldn't learn anything. If I had the text book I would learn just as much from the text book as if I went to the class. So I decided I'm gonna skip it. And this was a prevalent practice for a lot of students. And so they said if you have unexcused absences then you have to get these, the remedial types of treatment. So if you had three unexcused absences then you would get a notice of suspension and that would be a three-day suspension. And if you got nine days, it was triple that time period, then you got a longer suspension. And if you had a longer one than that then they would give you a termination from the school. And they started putting all these rules because they were having a hard time enforcing attendance at these schools and a lot of us were goofing around and doing other things. And the school was trying to get things back into the disciplinary structure. And my sophomore year I started skipping classes and we used to hang around out in different areas. And we felt we were able to make better use of our time than attending some of the classes. And unfortunately during that time period because they're going through a huge change over of school personnel, a lot of the classes that we would have liked to have taken didn't have the staff to support it. So we were assigned classes, and in my case I was assigned a Spanish class and that was the last thing I wanted to learn, so I invariably skipped those classes. And so here's a ruling that they're trying to lay down, and this was in the sophomore year process and I said, because of my own bias towards not attending the class, I started opposing this thing. I says, "You have no right to force people to attend classes that they didn't even want to take." And that was my position. And I had a couple of guys supporting me, but we lost. And they pushed the issue through anyway.

TI: And you lost because the other students opposed your, they wanted to go along with, with the school administration.

HM: Yeah, they were compliant with, with their request. So, I thought, well, these guys can't even think for themselves. And in my case because I didn't want to attend the Spanish class, that was part of my viewpoint. But then I didn't feel that the school should impose that kind of ruling on us when they can't even give us the curriculum that we wanted. And that was my position that I took. So I started changing about at that time. And the teacher that was the faculty advisor was Helen Amerman and she was a very dedicated Caucasian teacher, a very good teacher by the way.

TI: And so as you started opposing the school administration, was the reaction toward you different? I mean did they, did things become more difficult for you as, as you started doing things like this?

HM: Well the individuals that helped support me in that area, in fact they were pretty outspoken too. Well later, we became the targets of the faculty trying to pinpoint us as troublemakers and radicals, you know, these guys were different. But I think we were evolving at that time. We were going through a kind of a maturing process. And I think a lot of things that we, we had accepted early on in the assembly center and the beginning year of the camp in Minidoka, I think these things started to wear off and we became more realistic. But we became the targets of the faculty. And later on I had a situation was Miss Amerman that wasn't too comfortable for me and it was a very marked point in my departure of my education process.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.