Melissa Hale-Spencer is reporting for The Altamont Enterprise students at Guilderland High School on November 9, staged their second walkout in less than a month. The most recent event involved 35 to 40 students, mostly females, and was held to protest sexual harassment. The first action, on October 17, involved approximately 100 students and followed an incident at a football game. At that game, a few students who were part of a large cheering section and all dressed in black for a “blackout” theme, painted their faces black. The first walkout was more organized, Superintendent Marie Wiles said. After students had their say, they returned to their classes at the end of the period, she said. She described students in the first walkout as “passionate for sure” and called listening to them “a very intense experience,” but she also said those students were respectful. But students protesting on November 9, were disruptive and disrespectful. She said adults in the building that morning were terrified. “They were afraid. I could see it in their eyes,” Wiles said. Students opened the school’s front doors, against security protocols, to let students out and back in again. And when the adults were finished listening to the complaints and asked the students to return to class, the students refused. This created a bottleneck in the school lobby as other students, not involved in the protest, were trying to get to class. Wiles stressed that sexual harassment will not be tolerated nor will racist behaviors, but she also expressed zero tolerance for unsafe and disrespectful behaviors. Wiles communicated with students' parents and guardians, describing the walkout because she wanted to “put everyone on fair notice that we will take disciplinary measures.” Asked what those disciplinary measures would be, Wiles said, starting with “the gentlest,” students who miss class will be marked with an unexcused absence. On the question of safety, Wiles said that Guilderland’s police chief, Daniel McNally, “has said that, if the district was interested in a second School Resource Officer, he would be willing to assign an officer for the balance of this year without additional cost.” Read more in The Altamont Enterprise.