Declaration by the Students of Garfield High School by Anna Coonrod

When, in the course of student events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve all social lives, sleeping patterns, and after school sports and activities, and to assume the power of the loss of fun for a life of perpetual homework, they should declare the causes which impel them to complain of the amount of homework.
We hold these truths to be self evident: that all students are created equal; that they are endowed by their teachers with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and a good night’s worth of sleep; that to secure these rights, limits on the amount of nightly homework are instituted among the schools, deriving their just powers from the consent of those doing the homework; that whenever any form of teacher becomes destructive to one’s sleep or social life, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish them, and to institute new principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their sleep and sanity. But when a long train of sleepless nights and stressful days begun at a distinguished period, evinces a design to reduce them, it is our rights as students, it is our duty to throw off such teachers giving too much homework, and to provide new guards for our future and security. The history of Garfield High School is a history of continuing sleepless nights and busy work, which all have in direct object the establishment of a stressful life for the students.