UC Irvine

This dissertation project provides an ethnographic case study of a group of high school student organizers that challenged the increased use of police in American public schools and the criminalization of school discipline in Los Angeles, California. Indeed, there now exists growing body of work on the criminalization of youth and the school to prison pipeline. However, there has been much less focus on the mobilization of students and young people against these issues. I draw on two years of participant observation research that I conducted from 2015 to 2017 with a social movement community organization in Los Angeles, and on 15 in-depth semi structured interviews with high school student organizers. I rely on the voices and perspectives of youth to three central questions: (1) what were the actions students took during their time with The Center; (2) how and why did students become involved with The Center; and (3) how were these students transformed by their actions. This research also aims to reorient the ways in which young people are understood and positioned within social science research. I view young people as experts of their own lives, with perspectives and experiences that are essential for the development of social theory. I focus on the voices and experiences of students who have traditionally been given little space within the extant literature on school security and punishment. I argue that the students in my case study engaged in powerful community activism that deeply impacted their critical consciousness, political perspectives, and future outlooks.