RALLYING ‘ROUND ROTC:

About 20 members of Santa Barbara High School’s Junior ROTC
program marched to school district headquarters last Friday to
protest the program’s slated termination. A controversial vote
earlier this spring set the wheels in motion for the nearly
100-year-old program to be replaced next year by a decidedly
non-military peer leadership program of the district’s design.
Sporting fatigues and black T-shirts, the students walked from the
high school to the district office on Santa Barbara Street,
carrying signs and chanting. School Superintendent Brian Sarvis
attempted to address the students, but beat a hasty retreat after
he was bombarded with negative catcalls. The march came in response
to the district’s out-of-court settlement of a Brown Act violation
lawsuit brought by the local Libertarian Party. The lawsuit hinged
on intimations that the board decided on the ROTC program’s fate
behind closed doors nearly three months before the actual hearing
on the matter.