The Youth Equity Stewardship group, a district-wide initiative used to empower student voices, had its first district-wide meeting on Sept. 16 at the Center for Academic Achievement. During the meeting, students discussed plans for the future on how to make the school district a more inclusive environment.
Although Y.E.S. is district-wide, students from different schools also had a chance to make personalized goals during the meeting. The SM East Y.E.S. group outlined three core objectives for the year: inform students of the bullying reporting process, work with school leaders to spread awareness about inclusivity and publicize what both Y.E.S. and the Multicultural Student Union do around the school.
Y.E.S. collaborates with teachers and administrators to create a safe district community. Throughout the past few years, the club has been a part of making changes to the district's discipline policies, teaching teachers how to respond to derogatory terms in their classroom and working with middle school students on self-advocacy.
“I want students to have ownership in their own experience, and adults to really take the time to listen to that and understand those experiences,” District Y.E.S. Coordinator Kaitlin Shulman said. “Because we are all in education for a reason, and usually it's because of kids, so if we say that, we should really mean that on a deeper level.”
According to Y.E.S. member and junior Sofia Paddock, SM East Y.E.S. will first be implementing the goal of increasing awareness about the reporting and discipline process. During the meeting, students from across the district raised concerns about bullying reports going unanswered.
Associate principal Anna Thiele, who also attended the meeting, was able to explain that administrators are required to investigate all reports. But most of the time, the information in the reports isn’t sufficient enough for them to determine necessary aspects like the location, time or perpetrator, so they can’t take much action.
When discussing the bullying reporting process, students came to the consensus that the reporting system should be utilized more in order to hold students accountable for their behavior.
“I feel as though it is normalized, specifically at East, to brush things under the rug, especially when it comes to bullying or race or LGBTQ discriminatory remarks,” Paddock said.
Paddock believes that students not knowing how to use the online Report Bullying system leads to little action against discriminatory behavior.
“It just creates an unsafe environment in East when we don't know how to report bullying,” Paddock said. “Or when people don't feel like they need to or won’t get an actual response.”
The Y.E.S. students plan to make an informational video to be shown during advisory on how to correctly fill out a report with the necessary information that administrators need. They also want to inform students about the process administrators are required to follow once they receive a report, to reassure students that their voice matters.
The Y.E.S. group also decided to create the goal of working more with school leaders, such as Student Council, Pep Club, teachers and coaches, to help make a stronger impact on any messages the club wants to get out to the student body.
“We can push for actual change to happen, because people will listen to [the leaders], " Y.E.S. member and senior Shubra Durgavathi said. “Students will follow what they're doing, especially with student leaders. Students will care more about what they have to say.”
The third goal of the year for the club is less concrete than the other two, according to Durgavathi, but the students plan to find a way to raise more awareness about groups like Y.E.S. and MCSU. The way in which they plan to achieve this goal is still being worked out.
According to Durgavathi, they made this goal to reassure students that action is being taken to help improve the school’s environment, and make sure students know these clubs are always open to new members.
In the past years, SM East has usually had the smallest group of students come to the Y.E.S. meetings compared to the other schools, according to Paddock. But this year, instead of just four to five SM East students, there were around 20. Paddock believes this shows students want to be more involved in making the school a better environment.
“I think [students] want to make a change,” Paddock said. “They want to have an impact. And Y.E.S. club promotes leaders who want to do that and so many other aspects, like creativity, having compassion or empathy and inclusion.”
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