With all the national news following the decisions by grand juries in the cases of Eric Garner (Staten Island, NY) and Michael Brown (Ferguson, MO) and the protests that have taken place in cities across our country, the Office of Multicultural Education and Community Life arranged a series of events designed to educate our students about what is happening, while also providing avenues of open discussion among students and faculty to share feelings, and different points of view.
The office shared various news sources to provide context, and the facts as they have been presented, and invited the community to an Open Forum to discuss these events. The forum was attended by about 100 students and faculty, and after some short introductions and ground rules, small groups were created to allow everyone to be able to be heard who wanted to speak. Within each group, we arranged ourselves in two concentric circles. The inner circle individuals shared in response to the prompt “I feel” while the outer circle silently listened. After 7 minutes, the outer circle shared, “We heard,” in an attempt to relay all the emotions and points of view they heard. At the end of the exercise, we came back together and Mrs. Walker-Johnson, Dean of Multicultural Education and Community Life, thanked everyone for participating and asked us to write anonymously on index cards what we hoped or wished as an outcome.
At All School Meeting later in the week, students and faculty put together a program to raise awareness of these important events in our country. The presenters wanted to illustrate to the student body the types of slogans and postures protesters were using to peacefully communicate their protest to the Grand Jury decisions so that students would understand what these messages mean, and their context, as they see various expressions on social media, the news, and on t-shirts of famous athletes and actors.
Some of the quotes forum attendees wrote on their index cards earlier in the week were shared to close All School Meeting with a hopeful tone. Some examples: “I hope and wish that I will act with love and respect in all I do in the future. I also hope for peace, progress, and goodwill.” “I hope that we will celebrate the universality of the human experience and appreciate the value of our different perspectives.” “I hope that people, all people, will feel the comfort of equality, safety, and inclusion that I do and have the ability to express and voice their chance to change the world.” Students were then invited to speak with teachers throughout the day and to express themselves through poetry, art and writing in The Bowsprit, our magazine of art and literature.
As an institution, we feel these activities have upheld our mission to inspire a life long love of learning, to foster care for others and committed citizenship, and to encourage personal responsibility. We hope our response has allowed our students to become aware of important events in the history of our country, to express their opinions from a base of common knowledge, and to learn how to express their opinion in a way that is safe for everyone. We also hope that these events will serve as a springboard for even greater attendance at regular gatherings planned in the new year to continue important dialogues within our community in order to realize our intention that Tabor be a safe, inclusive environment for all to share their points of view within a diverse living/learning community.
