THE STIFLING OF dissent by some administrators of the San Francisco Unified School District has to stop.

Two years ago, I spoke during public comment at a school board meeting to criticize the unilateral firing of Student Advisory Council staff by the administration. The next day – during school time and without the consent of my parents – I sat in my principal's office for an hour and a half while I was questioned, advised to give more respect to Supt. Arlene Ackerman, and told to stay mum. How do staff members at my school have the right to tell me what not to say at a public meeting of the school board?

At a meeting called by the district staff last month, district staff and Youth Leadership Institute, which works with SAC on a district contract, told SAC representatives that if we continued to advance resolutions opposing Ackerman's policy requiring teachers to reapply for their jobs at restructured schools and criticize her lucrative contract, the superintendent "would retaliate against the SAC," and our council would be dismantled. Later I found out staff members had also called individual students specifically for the purpose of asking them to take their names off the resolutions.

The fact that adult staff are even getting involved in the deliberations of a council whose purpose is to represent students is unethical, undemocratic, and authoritarian.

On June 9 Ackerman sent an e-mail to SAC reps unilaterally postponing our meeting, and principals contacted students to tell them not to attend the meeting. Our chair, after looking in the law books to be sure Ackerman had no authority to act in such a manner, called the meeting anyway, and we passed both resolutions overwhelmingly.

But it wasn't over. As the meeting convened, the district handed out a 30-page press packet declaring that I didn't write my own resolutions and that adults were "using" students for their own political agenda (even though nothing we do is even binding). The press packet told students to go back to working on bathrooms instead of going into adult issues we don't understand.

I have a few questions: Are taxpayers' dollars supposed to be used to hire personal public relations henchmen for the superintendent? How does the PR department sleep at night knowing they attack students and stifle free speech? Where are our First Amendment rights?

I remember that when I first began working with the school district, I had such innocence and optimism about government. I had always thought it was something honest, something you could look up to that made changes to better society.

But after two years, after seeing such corruption, intimidation tactics, and stifling of dissent, I have grown cynical about the process. My experience leads me to the conclusion that in order to improve the process, there must be good people willing to fight for an honest government that works for the public good. I will continue that fight.

Alan Wong was twice elected by his peers across the district to be the student delegate to the San Francisco Board of Education and is currently a plaintiff in a lawsuit regarding the legality of the superintendent's pay raise.