Student Voices: students speak out in new seminar

Juniors Lucy Morantz, Madisyn Wallin, Will Barreca and Simon McDonald created a new student board called Student Voices. The board will potentially hold quarterly open seminars at the school in hopes of creating transparency with the administration.

The four students teamed up with assistant principal Britton Haney and social studies teachers Curtis White and David Muhammad in late February to create a board of students and administrators that could answer student questions about their school, administration or relevant topics in the community and allow them to have their thoughts directly heard, according to Morantz.

They wanted to create a system where students could express their opinions and ask questions without being avoided according to Barreca.

The goal of the open seminar March 1 was to get people to feel like they have a voice in their school. According to Morantz, they wanted to make sure every student who wanted to participate felt like they could use their voice freely and ask whatever they pleased.

“We are trying to make everyone as comfortable as we can so people aren’t scared to say whatever they want,” Morantz said.

The seminar’s structure was created by the group. They started the seminar with one main prompt of school safety and then allowed students to ask questions afterwards.  Collectively, the board decided to discuss the topics of school safety and mental health during their first open discussion. They are prompting students with questions like how to optimize students’ safety and which mental health factors play into gun violence according to Wallin and Barreca.

“For now, this first topic we will be discussing is school shootings and mental health, but as we go on we will discuss many more topics,” Barreca said.

The open seminar was very successful according to the board. Over 20 students stood up during the 45 minute seminar and discussed their opinions of teachers having guns, the drills set for safety measures, the school board purchasing guns for the district and mental health.

The discussion at times got heated with students giving their opinions about whether they feel safe or not at school and how guns come into play at East, but ultimately the board and Haney conducted the seminar so that only one student was speaking at a time and could give their full opinion on the matter.

The four student leaders expressed concern that the East area school board representative Mary Sinclair and at large representative Heather Ousley don’t fully know what students want.

“The representatives speaking for the students think they know what the students want,” Morantz said. “But this way each student is getting their own thought heard if they want to.”

Sinclair and Ousley both attended the seminar. The group even reached out to interim superintendent Dr. Kenny Southwick to see if he would attend the open seminar and be willing to answer students questions. Ousley felt that the seminar went well and was successful in allowing students to be heard.

“I’m so proud and impressed by our students and how they are taking on challenges and seeing what issues affect them and what they can do to make a difference,” Ousley said. “We would like to have a forum like this for the community as a whole.”

SMSD’s Executive Director of Emergency Services John Douglass spoke on behalf of the districts safety measures and agreed with students that he feels sometimes that the district isn’t effective in getting students informed on safety precautions.

“If we can sit in the same room and talk to each other back and forth in a civil manner then that is successful,” Douglass said. “We aren’t all going to agree on everything, but the most important thing in America we are supposed to sit down and discuss these issues not scream at each other.”

Haney also addressed safety questions specific to East.

“There are a lot of ‘what ifs’ that we can’t give a diffinitve answer to, but we can talk about how we would plan and prep and practice so that if a real situation did come up we would be ready for it” Haney said.

The idea of the board was created during third hour American History AP class by the four students. Each hour, the class usually gets five to 10 minutes to talk about current events. On Feb. 16, the discussion lasted almost the whole hour according to Morantz.

Students spoke up about their thoughts on the recent death of sophomore Alex Carney and of the mass shooting at Mason Stoney Douglas High School in Florida. Wallin added to the conversation saying that she thought that this discussion needed to happen with people who really could make a difference and to a larger group than just the third hour.

“The kids are just concerned about everyone’s safety and so we talked about having great communication together in the school, seeing each other as brothers and sisters and as a family,” White said. “We are all Lancers trying to do what’s right and enjoy ourselves at the school.”

White loved the idea of finding a way for the communication to be better and the students be more represented, so he took the group to the office during passing period. They went to Haney after their class to present their idea of the council and he jumped on board.

“I think it is a wonderful idea for students to have an opportunity to share how they feel,” Haney said.

Due to the high turnout and success of students sharing their thoughts at the seminar last week, Morantz thinks the discussions will become a quarterly occurrence so that they can periodically make sure that all students and faculty are “on the same page.”