My name is Lorna Quandt, I'm a senior, and I was one of the organizers of the walkout. This walkout was the first official activity of CHS's Students for a Democratic Society.

During the mandatory minute of silence, about 250 students walked out of their first period classes and went to the school's upper baseball field. Students then signed postcards to Virgil Goode, and signed a banner with a huge peace sign on it. Students then walked down Melbourne and Park St. to the the Downtown mall, chanting and holding posters along the way.

Once we reached the amphitheater downtown, a few students spoke out against the war to an eager audience and then we proceeded to the other end of the mall, where about a dozen students spoke to the crowd. We went from there to the corner, chanting (1-2-3-4 CHS rejects the war! 5-6-7-8 Stop the violence stop the hate!) and holding our signs for drivers to see.

We got a lot of honks and cheers, and a few thumbs-down, and ruder gestures. Once we got to the Rotunda, we stopped and held our signs for the cars driving past. Students then walked back to school via Rugby Road. At this point we had lost a significant number of our group to lunch breaks or parents giving rides back to school, but our group was still going strong.

All in all, it was a huge success. I think we raised a lot of awareness about our anti-war feelings, and showed people that we would not go about business as usual in this time of war. I think we also prompted our fellow students to think a little more about this war, because they certainly had to wonder why a quarter of the student body was gone for four periods.

Lorna Quandt (electronic mail, March 24, 2003)