Martin Lee Anderson, 14, died after being beaten by guards at the Bay County Boot Camp on January 5. The boot camp is operated by the Bay County Sheriff's Department and overseen by Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice.

TALLAHASSEE — Daron Wright's final exams start today, but on Wednesday night he sat in the locked plaza of the state Capitol explaining to a friend over his cell phone why he wasn't studying.

"I already dedicated myself to this," said Wright, a Florida A&M University student who slept on couch cushions outside Gov. Jeb Bush's office protesting the death of 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson. "This is about making change. I already made my decision. I made it. I'm here, man."

Wright was one of 40 students from FAMU, Tallahassee Community College and Florida State University who spent weeks planning a sit-in Wednesday that some called historic and others compared to the civil rights protests of the 1960's — with a few modifications.

The students, aged 17 to their early 20s, wore suits and ties and pearls and patent leather. They brought their homework and laptop computers. They answered cellphone calls from worried parents. They appointed spokespeople.

"This is a new-age sit-in," said Rep. Ron Greenstein, D-Coconut Creek. "Look how they're dressed. We would have had holes in our T-shirts and jeans."

Anderson, an eighth-grader from Panama City, died in January after being punched and kneed by boot-camp guards.

The reasons students joined the sit-in protesting his death differed. Some have parents from Haiti and Jamaica and heard stories about injustices that couldn't be protested and were never rectified. Others were jarred by the videotaped beating of Anderson, knees buckling, his body going limp. Some were spurred by parental lament over "this generation's" lack of a social conscience.

J.P. Eason, a 23-year-old FSU student, said he didn't understand the importance of Anderson's death and subsequent calls of foul play until he started going to planning meetings for the sit-in.

A veteran protester, Eason has opposed the Iraq war in Washington D.C. and briefly joined a year-long protest against the School of the Americas at Fort Benning. Wednesday night, as students sang or sacked out in a hallway with the portraits of former governors lording over them, Eason thought about the politics of the protest and the unexpected welcome that his group received at the capitol.

Most of the students had prepared to be arrested, or at least escorted not so nicely out of the building. Instead, Bush agreed to meet with them — although he didn't satisfy their demands — and no one found themselves in handcuffs.

"For the governor to invite us in here is like him saying that our presence isn't that big of a deal," Eason said. "It's like a challenge, it's like he's saying, 'Oh, isn't that cute.' "

Wednesday morning, sleep still in his eyes, 17-year-old FSU freshman Pedro Gassant began his first protest by sitting down in the governor's waiting room.

An honor-roll student and athlete in high school, Gassant said he was more the type to play a pickup game of basketball than participate in a protest. He wants to change that in college.

"I look back at high school and think, 'I could have done something more substantial,' " said Gassant, whose parents are from Haiti.

But grades are still important to him and with a biology final coming up Friday, he said he will leave the protest if it's still going on to take the 100-question test.

Others are skipping their finals, and are willing to suffer the consequences.

Debontina Adamson, a 22-year-old FSU student, has two finals today that she is prepared to miss. One is in the class Theories and Dynamics of Race and Oppression. Adamson feels like her professor should understand her absence.

France Francois, a sophomore at FSU, feels similarly. She has a paper due today and a final to take.

But letting the governor know that Anderson's death can't be ignored was important enough to sacrifice her school work and she said her parents are proud of the decision.

"They've complained that our generation doesn't care, that we're complacent," she said. "We're calling this the neo-civil rights movement. We're setting a precedent."

Most students told their parents they were participating in the sit-in. None said they were forbidden to go.

Parents did warn their children not to let the protest get violent and many called repeatedly for reassurance that all was well.

"They've been blowing up my phone," said Gassant, whose mother called six times between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m.

At 10 p.m., Lateshia Mitchell's mother hadn't checked on her yet. She's a Fort Lauderdale chef who worked the late shift Wednesday. A native of Jamaica who never graduated college, Mitchell's mother was not thrilled about her missing class to participate in the sit-in.

"One of the reasons why our family came here was for justice," said Mitchell, 19. "I'm just going to have to explain to my mother how important this is to me and that I have to do this for myself."