In Tuesday’s national merit awards ceremony at the National Palace, one of the 400 recipients caused a sensation by interrupting President Fernández’s televised speech about the modernization of the Dominican school system. Clarissa Carmona Ramíez, a 17-year old high school student from Baní said: "Excuse me, Mr. President, I understand perfectly what you have said about the process of modernization and I am completely in agreement. But what happens in communities like mine, where there are not even a roof under which to have classes?" The student was urged to sit down and shut up by the Education Ministry’s regional official for Azua, among others. She insisted on speaking, and President Fernández allowed her to pose her question. When reporters tried to question the girl, she was escorted out of the auditorium by Press Undersecretary Sandy Lockward. Later some Palace officials wondered aloud off-the-record if the student had been put up to the act by an adult in order to publicly embarrass the President, or if she was a young activist for an opposition party. Yesterday most of the major news dailies sought her out in Baní for interviews, making her an instant celebrity. The articulate student said that the intervention had been her own idea and was not politically motivated. She had not intended to embarrass the President, she asserted, but rather to make him understand what conditions are truly like outside the capital. She insisted that the Palace officials did not keep her from speaking to reporters; it had been her own choice not to. Carmona showed reporters how class is conducted under a group of mango trees instead of a school building.
