Students protest in Sandalwood High School hallways after race-insensitive posts

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A student demonstration at the largest school in Duval County.

Sandalwood High School students staged an outing Wednesday after a series of online posts sparked outrage.

It all started on Tuesday with a post on Microsoft Teams by Dr. Saryn Hatcher, principal of Sandalwood High School. It was about promoting the school district’s mental health awareness campaign this month.

The “You Matter the Month” campaign caused many students to be outraged thinking it was a replacement for Black Lives Matter and, by extension, Black History Month, which is also in February. DCPS spokeswoman Tracy Pierce said the district recently crossed the campaign mark from the original “#TakeOffTheMask” message, after causing some confusion and involuntary mixed messages, the Florida Times first reported. -Union.

Announcements

Then the students allegedly posted racially insensitive comments on this Microsoft Teams thread and the principal finally closed the entire thread.

News4Jax spoke to the organizer and one of the protesters and explained what made them leave class.

“Then it was when he said to me, ‘Okay, this is the last straw.’ We are not heard, “said student and organizer Jara Enoch.” Our ideas and concerns are not expressed because we are currently silent. So I decided to post this message, I said calmly, that everyone can leave at 12:30, and we will protest in the cafeteria. “

“We felt like for our school, having such a low level of respect for us,” said student Jodi Price. “We felt the need to dress in black and walk around the aisles singing‘ Black Lives Matter ’, because we feel that our voices are not heard enough because of what is happening today, you know, a lot of violence and things “.

Announcements

Both students said they had scheduled meetings with school administrators on Thursday.

According to district spokeswoman Tracy Pierce, there was no physical violence and no injuries were reported. There were a few blows on tables and stops on tables, but there was no damage to school property, Pierce said.

There were additional police officers called to the school towards the end of the demonstration for about two hours, but they did not commit at all, they were only there to make sure no one entered or left the campus without permission and to ensure -I know the campus was safe, the district said.

Sandalwood High School senior vice president Kimberly Williams, 17, said that while the protest did not go exactly as planned, there are still issues at the school that need to be addressed.

“Being in Sandalwood for four years, I witnessed racism among peers, racist comments in all my classes, and personally, I really didn’t know how to attack it and I feel like I didn’t have a voice strong enough to say anything, really no one did, ”Williams said. “I just feel like we need to have a montage to be able to talk about it and make it known … instead of pulling it down and ignoring it.”

Announcements

Williams and other members of the student government plan to meet with school administrators to try to figure out the best way forward and have productive discussions.

.Source

Share this:

Related