
An elite California personal college is going through backlash from dad and mom after dedicating a two-page unfold in its 2026 yearbook to a pupil anti-ICE walkout — full with photographs of protesters carrying indicators declaring “Ice will soften in hell” and “nobody is illegitimate on stolen land.”
Greater than 100 college students at Harvard-Westlake College in LA participated within the nationwide anti-ICE demonstration on Jan. 30, leaving campus and marching alongside Coldwater Canyon and Ventura Boulevard carrying protest indicators.
On the time, college officers advised dad and mom they weren’t formally endorsing the demonstration however wouldn’t cease college students from leaving campus.
Now, months later, the protest has been immortalized within the college’s yearbook.
The unfold options a number of photographs from the demonstration and asks college students to reply the query: “what second from the anti-ICE stroll out felt essentially the most highly effective and significant to you?”
The yearbook function has angered some dad and mom who argue the celebrated college crossed the road from training into political activism.
“I might say everyone seems to be entitled to political views however the college shouldn’t be making political selections. They overstepped the road,” one Harvard-Westlake guardian advised The California Put up.
“It actually does go from training to indoctrination.”
The controversy is unfolding at one of many nation’s most prestigious personal colleges. With annual tuition topping $50,000, the Studio Metropolis campus has constructed a repute as an Ivy League feeder college and attracts the kids of Hollywood executives, leisure business heavyweights, political insiders and a few of Los Angeles’ wealthiest households.
“As it’s possible you’ll bear in mind, some college students have indicated that they plan to take part in a walk-out at 11:45 a.m. tomorrow to protest ICE,” Higher College Head Beth Slattery wrote to oldsters the evening earlier than the protest.
“The varsity will not be formally supporting this walk-out, however college students won’t be bodily prevented from leaving campus ought to they select to take part within the protest.”
The next day, Slattery knowledgeable dad and mom that an estimated 100 to 125 college students had joined the protest.
“The scholars who participated walked down Coldwater and Ventura, carrying indicators in peaceable protest,” she wrote. “In talking with members after they returned, there was an awesome sense of delight in themselves and their classmates for standing up for his or her beliefs. I share in that delight and hope that they are going to proceed to interact on points that matter to them.”
“I believe it was actually empowering to really feel the nice sense of neighborhood round me with a bunch of different fellow HW college students and college members,” one pupil wrote.
The guardian who spoke to The Put up claimed the varsity is narrowing the vary of views college students are being uncovered to.
“These college students are offered with these political beliefs by their academics and so they’re offered as information. It limits viewpoint range.”
The guardian additionally stated others within the college neighborhood privately share related issues however are reluctant to talk publicly.
“There are a lot of others who share this sense however they’re afraid to talk up as a result of their baby could face some retribution due to it.”
But critics say the yearbook unfold has thrust the elite establishment into an more and more heated debate over politics within the classroom.
Harvard-Westlake didn’t instantly reply to The Put up’s request for remark.
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