Recently, Lexington High School (LHS) held a walkout to protest ICE, led by seniors Layla Farnham and Alya Modirzadeh-March. What started as just an idea quickly turned into a school-wide movement, bringing together students who shared the same beliefs but had never been fully connected..

Recently, Alya explained how she knew many people at LHS who “had these same goals as us and the same beliefs, but there was a lot of disunity.” Not many people were aware that this community existed. “Layla’s and I’s goal was to unite the power and community at LHS.” Layla added that she had seen countless high schools hosting walkouts on January 30th, especially in California, and “that really inspired me to unite kids our age that were doing something about the cause. And so I wondered ‘if they’re doing it, why can’t we?’” After sharing the idea with Alya the LHS walkout began to take shape.

But of course, it wasn’t that easy, it couldn’t happen over night. Layla described the process: “we first had to go to the administration, and ask ‘is this possible?Before we start planning, are we even allowed to do this?’” She also mentioned how LHS has had walkouts before, but “only as long as students are being safe, it’s ok.” Unfortunately, the staff couldn’t be involved in helping with the walkout, so Alya and Layla went to the Lexington Police. She described how she had meetings with the principal, and how they were talking mainly about safety. She said that the number one issue “was the snow, because of the snowstorm that happened. It made it difficult to find a place to congregate.” She also said that “originally, we wanted to bring people to the Lexington Battle Green, which is very symbolic because that’s where the first battle of the American Revolution happened.” Because of the snow, Layla and Alya were unable to host the hundreds of students from LHS at the Battle Green, so they had to find someplace else. Eventually, they settled on having their walkout in the center of Lexington. 

Alya said that because they had a walking protest, it allowed students to show more of Lexington what their beliefs were, allowing the LHS students to have a larger impact on the residents of Lexington. 

They both said that they didn’t plan on hosting anymore walkouts in the near future, but, as Alya said, “we will have to see what happens.” Layla added, “we will have to stay up to date on what the current administration is doing, and how problems with ICE are evolving, but we’re going to keep up with the cause.” They will continue posting content on their Instagram account, @iceoutlhs. They will post ways on “how you can help defund ICE by reaching out to your senators.”

This was their advice to other students who want to host walkouts at their schools, but are too scared to, or don’t know how to: despite being super nervous, especially of the people who would say mean or hurtful things, Alya noticed that there were so many people present, and “all of the people who had been making fun of us, or making jokes, went back on that. If you’re worried about backlash or if you’re worried about somebody saying something, just know you have a huge community of people who agree with you, and are willing to fight with you.” Layla said how she was worried about all of the people who were making fun of herself and Alya: “I was scared that no one was going to show up.” Despite this, she still did it: “I told myself that I need to tell my children and grandchildren that I did something. I can’t stay silent at a time where horrible things are happening, and people are getting killed and discriminated against.”