A Petition with Power

Each year, students have the same days off. They look forward to winter break when they get to celebrate Christmas, the long weekends from Memorial day and MLK jr. day. Yet, while most students look forward to these days off, two students noticed that one of the biggest holidays that they celebrate isn’t one of these days off.

Freshmen Eunjee Kang and Jordynn Lee, celebrate Lunar New Year with their family and friends each year. This year, Kang and Lee decided to take action. They wanted Lunar New Year to be made into an official holiday and a day off from school for all Wayland public school students.

“We want everyone to think that it is as important as other holidays,” Lee said. “In some of our eyes it is more important than all other holidays. We aren’t asking for a week or a month, we are asking for just one day.”

On Feb. 16, Lee sent out an email informing the student body about the problem she was facing. Kang and Lee set up a petition and Facebook page, urging people to sign the petition to get Lunar New Year recognized as an official holiday in Wayland. Lee stated facts in her email about how the Asian population in Wayland public schools makes up 15% of students. She also shared the statistics of how surrounding areas are starting to acknowledge Lunar New Year as a holiday. Schools in Hopkinton, Boston, Newton, Andover and all New York City public schools now observe this holiday and either give students a day off from school or do not make tests or projects due during that time.

“It takes a long time to prepare and celebrate and connect with your family during that actual day, but instead we spent half of our free time just studying and doing homework,” Lee said.

This year, Lunar New Year was on Feb. 1 and celebrated by 1.5 billion people throughout the world. Lee and Kang celebrated the day at school by wearing traditional Chinese clothing. However, both of them noticed that others around them were dressed up in other Winter Week psychs. This was one of the main reasons why the girls decided to take action and start the petition. Currently, the petition has surpassed the girls’ original goal of 500 signatures.

“I came up with this idea when I was pretty furious because we came to school on Lunar New Year and the only thing that was being talked about around our school was Winter Week, the talent show and what people were going to wear for the next winter week psyche,” Lee said. “There were no posters or people wearing red, no signs, no announcements. [It was hard] especially since some of my teachers the next day were like, ‘oh yeah I forgot it was Lunar New Year’s yesterday. What did you do to celebrate?’”

“Ever since I was born, my family hasn’t been big on holidays,” Kang said. “But Lunar New Year is the only holiday that I and my whole family is really invested in.”

Lee and Kang did research and found that other towns like Hopkinton, which has a smaller percentage of Asians than Wayland, still had the day off from school. The day before Lunar New Year, Lee visited friends in Brookline who bragged to her about how they got the day off from school to celebrate Lunar New Year.

“They were saying how they have a small, but loud and proud, Asian community there,” Lee said. “They were able to push for getting Lunar New Year’s off and this was the first time that their school district acknowledged Lunar New Year as an official holiday, so I felt like if they did it, why couldn’t we?”

Before moving to Wayland, Kang went to school in Newton. In Newton, the school acknowledged Lunar New Year as an official holiday, so up until her move in fourth grade, Kang had always had Lunar New Year off from school. During Lee’s childhood, Lee also got the day off from school; however, she later learned the reason she stayed home was because her parents let her take the day off.

“I felt angered by [being the only one staying home] because I felt like [while] other people got their holidays off, I had to get an absence mark on my attendance to celebrate mine,” Lee said.

Now that Lee is a freshman in high school, she has to make the hard decision on whether she still wants to take the day off from school to celebrate the holiday. Lee noticed that a lot of her friends also wanted to take the day off from school but did not want to miss the talent show and other Winter Week activities. Other students chose not to stay home because of their school work.

“This year, especially since we are freshman now, there is more work, there is a lot more pressure and a fight between our education and our culture.” Kang said.

Going forward, the two girls plan to take further action to get their petition passed and have Wayland public schools recognize Lunar New Year as an official holiday. After doing hours of research, the girls have put together a plan: sending out more emails, using social media and the internet and sharing their ideas through word of mouth.

“With the petition right now, we are hoping to show the school committee, the school board and Dr. Easy that a lot of people want to change this and acknowledge this as an official holiday,” Lee said. “We are trying to get the town, the school and the school committee to acknowledge Lunar New Year as an official holiday and a day that needs to be recognized.”