The Lowell Newsmagazine November 2015

Lowell The

November 2015

Lowell N

ovember

2015

MORE ONLINE

thelowell.org

The

PHOTOS: A Midsummer Night’s Dream enchants audience

LEONARD CAOILI

VICTORIOUS: Boys’ soccer wins back-to-back champs

Kelley grade

Cross country races their way to state competition

INSIDE THE MAGAZINE “ONE OF MY BIGGEST ISSUES WITH THE SCHOOL HAS BEEN THE UNBEARABLY EARLY START TIME.”

4

AIDA IRVING

“You say that you go to Lowell and you’re black, literally their facial expression is in shock.”

6 “How can I connect with people who want me to feel like I am just black or just white when I am not just one but rather two?”

10 Lily young

Girls’ golf wins gold over Wash for second year in a row

COVER: Senior Chrislyn Earle, vice president of the Black Student Union, has challenged stereotypes at Lowell, where African-Americans make up two percent of the student body. Photo illustration by Leonard Caoili, Kiara Gil and Aida Irving.

Standardized testing: less is more

A

EDITORIAL

two-year study released last month by the Council of Great City Schools has revealed that there is no correlation between hours spent testing and student performance in reading and math, and that tests can be redundant and have no clear purpose. San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) superintendent Richard Carranza himself is chair of the council’s Board of Directors, and should adjust the district’s testing policies accordingly based on these results. Shortly after the release of this study, the Obama administration declared that many standardized tests were “consuming too much instructional time,” and that standardized testing in schools should not take up more than two percent of a school year, which translates to less than four days. In light of these recent events, SFUSD and Lowell need to cut down, in a huge way, the number of tests that students must take.

Teachers lose instructional time During the 2014-2015 school year at Lowell, students took five standardized tests, which they spent anywhere from four to twentysix days on, depending on which grade they were in.

The CAHSEE (California High School Exit Examination), taken by tenth graders, took two days to administer, one for the English section and one for the math section.

The PSAT (Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test), taken by both tenth and eleventh graders, took one day.

The SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium) test, taken by eleventh graders, took between seven days and three weeks for English and math teachers to administer at Lowell.

Other tests taken by various grades, including the CLA (Common Learning Assessment) and IWA (Integrated Writing Assessment), took up to an additional five days.

“I don’t want to call it a nightmare, but it’s a puzzle,” said assistant principal of curriculum Dacotah Swett, who is in charge of coordinating Lowell’s standardized testing.

There is no correlation between hours spent testing and student performance in reading and math.

Teachers don’t get test results Along with standardized testing being excessive, it fails to actually allow teachers to assess their students, as they often do not receive the results of the tests their students took. This doesn’t help them correctly identify what students should be learning to meet the national goals and change their curriculum accordingly. Many districts do not receive the final state test results until two to four months after the tests are taken, which means that the results often arrive too late in the school year to provide any help to teachers, as was the case with Lowell and last year’s spring semester SBAC, according to Swett.

Teachers must change curriculum Due to the amount of time testing is taking up under the current system, teachers are forced to substantially alter their curriculum in order to make time for the tests. Due to last year’s SBAC test, Advanced Placement English teacher Jennifer Moffitt had to rush material for her AP class and cut an entire novel from her junior-senior classes.

The SBAC has been expanded even further this year, adding two more hours of interim testing into the fall semester of English and math courses, which is now being administered to all ninth and tenth graders, in addition to the juniors. English teachers now have to hand grade every essay that their students write for the testing in the fall, which cuts into time that they could have used to prepare or grade instructional material for their classes.

Less is more Although testing is being added in the form of two additional hours of interim SBAC tests, state-mandated testing is being cut down in a huge way with the revamping of the CAHSEE, which has been stopped for the next three years while the government redesigns a new test to better match Common Core standards. This is a good start.

We should only take tests that are proven to be effective, or rewrite the tests entirely, as California is doing with the CAHSEE. The remaining tests need to be more time efficient and match the Obama Administration’s goal of two percent of class time or less. The district must get timely test results to those directly affected by them, such as teachers and students, so that they can utilize those results, improve curriculum, and focus on learning, not testing. v

Editors-in-Chief

Luke Haubenstock • Whitney C. Lim • Amber Ly News Joseph Kim, W ­ hitney C. Lim, Emily Teng Sports Cynthia Leung, Amber Ly Features Luke Haubenstock, Noreen Shaikh Opinion Ophir Cohen-Simayof Reporters Josephine Dang, Aiko Delos Reyes, Caleb Hilladakis, Adrian Hung, JoyAnne Ibay, Stephanie Li, Alyssa Poon, Rachael Schmidt, Olivia Starr, Clarissa Wan, Sophia Wu, Luming Yuan, Jennifer Zhang Illustrators Emily Teng, Stephan Xie Photographers Leonard Caoli, Kiara Gil, Kelley Grade, Aida Irving, Alexis Picache, Lily Young Multimedia Editor Aida Irving Art Manager Emily Teng Business Managers Shania Lee, Jason Li, Kelvin Lu, Shania Qin

2

v The Lowell November 2015

Adviser

Samuel Williams

2014 NSPA Online Pacemaker 2012 NSPA Print Pacemaker 2011 NSPA All-American 2011 NSPA Online Pacemaker

2009 NSPA First Class Honors 2007 NSPA All-American 2007 NSPA Web Pacemaker 2007 CSPA Gold Crown

Published by the journalism classes of Lowell High School, Room S108, 1101 Eucalyptus Drive, San Francisco, CA 94132. Phone: (415) 759-2730. Email: thelowellnews@gmail.com, thelowellads@yahoo.com. All contents copyright Lowell High School journalism classes. All rights reserved.

The Lowell strives to inform the public and to use their opinion sections as open forums for debate. All unsigned editorials are the opinions of the staff.

The Lowell welcomes comments on school-related issues from students, faculty and community members. Send letters to lowellopinion@gmail.com. Letters must be signed. Names will be withheld upon request. We reserve the right to edit letters before publication.

FROM THE EDITORS

Why we must delve deeper into Lowell’s racial issues

A

s the Black Lives Matter movement sweeps across the nation, students have risen up to demand an end to systematic and structural racism on high school and college campuses.

While Lowell may seem distant from these events, a simple look at our student racial demographics will show that our school is not exempt from these underlying issues.

A mere two percent of Lowell’s student population identifies as African-American, with the current freshman class’s AfricanAmerican population at one percent. These miniscule statistics have led many community members to question why AfricanAmerican enrollment is so low and what we can do, both institutionally and personally, to support minority students at such a large

school and to promote a student body that is ethnically representative of the diverse city that we live in.

Our staff decided to address these issues in relation to Lowell with a three-part series that looks into the school’s enrollment of minority groups, specifically AfricanAmerican and Latino.

In the first installment, reporter Stephanie Li talks with Lowell’s African-American students to start addressing the ongoing problems with the school’s lack of racial diversity, including cultural appropriation and self-segregation. The second part will look at Lowell’s Latino students’ stories. Wrapping up the series, part three will delve into what is being done at Lowell to increase minority enrollment and support those students. v

TO THE EDITORS

LSA apologizes for controversial pop poll category

T

he Class of 2016 Board would like to apologize in regards to our choice of “Most Ratchet” to be allowed in the pop

polls.

We would like to explain how the category was allowed to be printed. We did not intend it to be a negative category or to shine any students

in a bad light. At the time we printed pop polls, we were unaware of the negative connotations of the term “ratchet,” or of any racist implications behind the word. With this new knowledge, in no circumstances would we ever allow this term to be used.

As student government leaders, we are here

to fully support an inclusive Lowell community.

We have removed this category and we ensure that boards in the future do not repeat this mistake. We have already discussed this with yearbook and it will not be published.

Class of 2016 Board

Senior advocates for later school starting time

A

ttending Lowell for over three years has been an overwhelmingly enjoyable and enriching experience. Unfortunately, Lowell is far from perfect. One of my biggest issues with the school has been the unbearably early start time of 7:35 a.m. on nearly all school days. Almost by nature, teenagers are hardwired to go to sleep and wake up later than adults. An early start time for school clashes with teenagers’ circadian rhythms, causing sleep deprivation.

Firstly, early school start times correlate directly with a loss of sleep. According to a study of over 3,000 high school students done in 1998 by a pair of Brown professors, average bedtimes for teenagers tend to be just after 11 p.m. Combining that with a reasonable wakeup time of around 6:30 a.m. yields an average nightly sleep of just over seven hours. This estimate is likely high, considering that the national average for nightly sleep among high school students is below seven hours.

This widespread chronic sleep deprivation is tied to higher BMI and obesity rates, a massive issue

the US spends nearly $150 billion annually in medical costs to prevent and treat. Nightly sleep approximately 120 minutes below the medically recommended amount means teenagers get less deep sleep (a part of the sleep cycle involved in growth and development, shout out to Mr. Shimmon) and therefore have bodies that don’t recover and grow the way they should. In extreme cases, this lack of sleep over a long period of time can lead to developmental stunting.

Secondly, getting more sleep would actually improve students’ academic performance, something everyone at Lowell cares about. Because sleep deprivation affects focus and concentration, students’ abilities to learn in class when they don’t get enough sleep is decreased, as well as their performances on standardized tests. While differences in test performance for students who get seven hours of sleep as opposed to the optimal nine hours of sleep are disputed, students who average under six hours of sleep tend to have much lower GPAs and SAT scores, a clear product of

sleep deprivation. If the average for student sleep is seven hours as opposed to eight, far too many students will actually average under the critical six hour per night rate.

Finally, many high school students are of age to drive, many get to school by driving themselves. Drowsy driving or people falling asleep behind the wheel is already a national problem, accounting for an annual 100,000 car accidents, and putting Lowell students at greater risk of being involved in an accident is a depressing reality of the status quo. Additionally, having students drive or bike to school at a time of the morning that is overcast and poorly lit is a problem.

Furthermore, lack of sleep is tied with slower reaction times and poorer judgment skills. On top of this, Lowell athletics don’t reach their full potential because athletes perform worse on game day, but they are also slower to show gains in the weight room.

Raul Rosenfeld, Class of 2016

The Lowell November 2015

v

3

4

v The Lowell November 2015

The Lowell November 2015

v

5

Finding

EQUITY A look into the African-American experience at Lowell.

By Stephanie Li

Photo by Kiara Gil and Aida Irving

Midway through her freshman year at Lowell, Chrislyn Earle, who is now a senior, was contemplating skipping school. She had come from the 220-student Mission Dolores Academy to Lowell looking for a new challenge, and a new challenge she got. “At first I didn’t try to make friends with people of different races because I was very scared, intimidated,” she says now, looking back on her freshman year at Lowell.

The low number of minorities at Lowell means that some African-American students are the only students of their race in their class, which some, like Earle, find uncomfortable.

In fact, there were only 61 African-Americans out 2,718 students last year, a mere 2.2 percent, compared to San Francisco Unified School District’s 10 percent. The African-American population at Lowell has not exceeded three percent since the 1999-2000 school year and it seems that number is only decreasing — African-Americans only make up one percent of the current freshman class.

However, this trend is misleading without understanding that Lowell’s African-American population has remained the same despite recent decreases in the district, according to principal Andrew Ishibashi. In the 2001-2002 school year, when Lowell’s African-American population was two percent, 15 percent of the SFUSD population was African-American.

On the other hand, last year, even as SFUSD’s African-American population dropped to 10 percent, Lowell’s African-American population stayed at two percent.

Yet the fact remains that some AfricanAmerican students who are accepted to Lowell continue to choose not to enroll. This year, 15 African-American students were accepted into the freshmen class. Of those, only nine African-American students actually enrolled at Lowell, a mere one percent of approximately 680 freshmen, according to Ishibashi. The disparity between the number of students accepted and number enrolled this year suggests African-American students, who could or are attending Lowell, have concerns that are not being effectively addressed. After all, the enrollee to acceptance rate for African-American freshmen this year is 10 percent less than the enrollee to acceptance rate for the whole cur-

rent freshman class, which is 70 percent.

In response, the school has made efforts to discover why minority students choose not to attend Lowell. In 2010 and 2011, students involved in the school’s youth leadership organization Peer Resources, led by coordinator Adee Horn, visited several middle schools with student populations that have high percentages of African-American and Latino students. Concerns that eighth-graders pointed out included transportation time, the workload, academic difficulty and that there weren’t a lot of their people of their ethnicity or race.

Self-Segregation Earle’s struggles in her first year at Lowell

Pages 6-7, clockwise: sophomore Robert Webb, junior Mikayla Sherman, sophomore LaJeanne Shelton, junior Tsia Nicole, junior Jacqueline Scott, senior Chrislyn Earle, sophomore Golden Landis-Von Jones 8

v The Lowell November 2015

exemplify why minority students may not want to come to Lowell. Before attending Lowell, Earle did not research the school and did not know much about it. She was understandably surprised and overwhelmed when she came to Lowell from Mission Dolores Academy, where 25 percent of the student population was African-American. “I didn’t really talk to that many people and I was not happy at Lowell because I was still not comfortable,” she said.

“I was not having fun like everybody else was.

When I was in class I was alone. No one really helped me.”

This was compounded by the fact that Earle experienced other students self-segregating and leaving her out when choosing groups for Nia Coats, Ophir Cohen-Simayof and Whitney C. Lim contributed reporting to this article.

COVER projects. “I think that was the hardest part of freshman year, but also just being invisible already,” she said. “The worst part is walking around asking people and you get rejected or they are avoiding you so that you won’t be in their group.”

In fact, 42 percent of students at Lowell see segregation by race and ethnicity when students choose their own seats in class, according to the YouthVoice survey administered by Peer Resources last month. The same survey also found that 57 percent of Lowell students saw segregation by race and ethnicity during students’ free time.

Self-segregation is especially relevant at Lowell, the largest high school in the city, with a population of over 2,600 students. The big-

at Lowell. Davis met her diverse group of friends when she attended a summer algebra program hosted by Lowell before her freshman year. Their friendship continued into the school year. “What holds us together is just our personalities,” she said. “I began looking at other characteristics, so that it wasn’t anymore about what’s on the outside, but rather what is on the inside.”

Davis believes that having friends from different backgrounds is important in understanding different points of view as well. Her Filipino friends teach her about their culture, traditions and language. “Having diversity will help you in your high school life and it will allow you to see the different kinds of people there are,” she said.

At Lowell, however, Nicole still encountered the same difficulties that many freshmen, regardless of race, experience: the challenging academics. “Freshman year was kind of hard because middle school was easy so I didn’t have to spend much time studying or doing homework and I still got good grades,” she said. Fortunately, by sophomore year, Nicole became accustomed to Lowell’s workload and completed her transition from middle school to Lowell smoothly.

Lowell’s reputation as an academically challenging school reaches students even before they attend. These stereotypes can act as a barrier to African-American admission into Lowell, according to Nicole. “I think the main reason why minorities don’t want to come is

Junior Tsia Nicole, co-president of BSU

Photo illustration by Kiara Gil and Aida Irving

ger the school population is, the more racial segregation occurs and the fewer interracial friendships exist, according to a 2013 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Speaking Up Fortunately, in her sophomore year Earle became accustomed to Lowell and got advice from her mother to complete her classes and open up. “I was comfortable and I wasn’t afraid of my classes even though I was the only black person because I had to get used to it,” she said. “I would raise my hand and ask and answer questions, which is key because you need to make yourself known.”

After making friends of different races, sophomore Chy’na Davis felt more welcome

Sophomore Chet Okorie made friends who are of Filipino descent on the first day of school in his English class and has stuck with them throughout his Lowell career because they make him laugh. Okorie’s friend sophomore Tyler Vicente said that race does not matter in their friend group; instead, it’s other qualities, like a sense of humor and a willingness to play basketball.

Academics Unlike Earle, junior Tsia Nicole, who is now co-president of the Black Student Union, was already familiar with being one of few African-Americans at school and the only one in many classes. She came from Roosevelt Middle School, where only 6.6 percent of over 700 students are African-American.

because they hear how difficult the school may be,” she said.

When Earle talked to African-American peers about attending Lowell, their immediate response was to say that Lowell would be too hard for them. Adults perpetuate the same stereotypes. “If you talk to another person or an adult, and you say that you go to Lowell and you’re black, literally their facial expression is in shock,” Earle said. “‘You go to Lowell? Are you sure you go to Lowell?’”

Sophomore Golden Landis von Jones found rumors of failing grades to be misleading and wasn’t discouraged. “Before I came, even after I was accepted and planned on going here, I had people telling me, ‘Oh, your GPA is going to drop a ton and you’re See EQUITY on pg. 13

The Lowell November 2015

v

9

KIARA GIL

COLUMNS

I WILL NOT CHOOSE.

By Rachael Schmidt

I

arrived at my cousin Angela’s fourteenth birthday party and was the first one there. Her mom is from Malaysia and her dad is German. I immediately gravitated towards her and for the rest of the evening, we exchanged gossip, played guitars and harmonized together.

Once my father’s side of the family began to arrive and attempted to interact with us, we retreated to her room. My cousin and I always laugh when we joke and scream, “Run away!” as we make our great escape. But I have always wondered why we feel so inclined to leave when our other relatives, who are mostly white, begin to show up.

I used to figure it was because of our vast age differences in comparison to our other family members’, but the more I thought about it after the party, the more I realized that I had grown uncomfortable with my father’s family when I was nine years old and my parents divorced. After my mother, who is black, became absent from family gatherings, I felt even more out of place. I am half white and half black. When one side of my background is taken away, I do not feel complete.

Before the divorce, I thought I was just white. For a year after the divorce, I thought I was just black. Now I do not know what to think and I have felt this way since I was 10. Because my school and home lives do not have equal representation of my two races, I have experienced immense racial identity struggles that have ultimately led me to feel most comfortable around racially mixed people like myself.

I was born to a family with parents of different races. My mother is black — she does not refer to herself as African-American ethnically, nor does she care which title is used to describe her — and my father is white — he claims he has German, Irish and even French-Canadian ethnic roots. Growing up, I visited my mother’s primarily black side of the family in Texas on occasion, but for the most part, my family life consisted of living with my father’s European side here in San Francisco.

Deciphering my racial identity was not such a large issue when I was younger. I stuck to what I was most familiar and comfortable with — having racial representation from both sides with me at all

times. Family gatherings with my father’s white family were manageable when my mother was there to balance the racial aspect of the group. Likewise, I saw family gatherings with my mother’s side of my family as normal when someone white joined the mix, such as a friendly neighbor. The first Easter I spent with only my father’s side of the family felt so awkward and uncomfortably strange that I have vowed since then to stay with my mother during holiday gatherings.

Even with my mother’s company, I wish for the days of my past when my family could congregate normally and the racial components of myself, both black and white, were present simultaneously.

This sentiment remained even after my parents’ divorce, when my mom took 100 percent responsibility for my custody. I was nine years old then. I initially expected to never see my father’s side of the family again when I was caught between the parental split, but despite my father’s regular absence, I actually started to see my father’s side at family gatherings more than I had before.

After the divorce, however, my mom no longer attended my white side’s family gatherings anymore. Without her, the disconnect between my purely white family and me was so strong at these events that I tended to cling to my younger cousin, who is Malaysian and German, since she is racially mixed like myself. We hid ourselves away from the adults and relied on each other’s company to persevere through the day. Without the other side of our races, we felt that parts of us were missing, and that there was an imbalance that just could not be ignored.

Despite these early discomforts, the question of whether I felt truly black or truly white did not come up until I was eleven. My mother asked how I saw myself, and that was when I told her that I considered myself a “white girl.” She was shocked and insisted that because she was black and because she was my mother, I must consider myself black as well. It was a law of nature, in her opinion. She explained to me that a child with any amount of African-American heritage, whether it was one-half, or one-sixteenth, was considered black in the south, where she is from.

See CHOICE on pg. 13

The Lowell November 2015

v 11

2 months

FREE enroll by 11/30/15

(415)681-7223 www.STUDYHALL.me 12 v

The Lowell November 2015

JOURN

JOIN

Looking for a new place to study?

From CHOICE on pg. 11 It is the principle she grew up with as a child herself and the one she follows today. My mother is Cajun, which has French and African-American origins, yet she is from Texas. But, because of the all-black rationale instilled in her when she was a child, she forgets her French side and claims she is purely black. Although readily forgetting one race is not as easy for me as it was for her, she has put me down as just black on my transcripts for school as a result.

The problem was that I had never felt just one side of my race. I had black cultural aspects to my mannerisms and I had white ones as well. When I tried to pretend that I was a member of just one race and not the other, it felt all wrong. This was the case at school especially.

Freshman year, I met a friend at school who was black and white like me and I felt especially close to them from the first time we met. We went together to the Black Student Union meeting because, even though we are not just black, we are both listed as just black on our transcripts. During the meeting, we agreed we had never felt more out of place — nearly everyone in the room was fully black, but we were racially mixed. Maybe my friend felt strange because we were two awkward freshmen feeling out of place in our new school, but I had the vaguest sense that my discomfort was for racial reasons. There was some barrier preventing me from feeling at home that I was not aware of at the time. I was white too, and even though it wasn’t listed on my transcript, it mattered somehow. I simply felt as though I didn’t belong. I was too shy to ever bring forth my apprehensiveness to the people running the BSU. My lack From EQUITY on pg. 9 going to do bad and fail.’ but none of those things happened,” he said.

Earle’s experence at Lowell began to improve after she gained confidence in her own academic abilities. After realizing that she was getting the same grades — and even higher — than everybody else in class, her mentality changed. “Just because you’re a different race than me and I’m black, doesn’t mean you’re superior to me in any way,” she said. “I realized that I got into this school just like you and if I put in my best I will get the best outcome.”

Cultural Appropriation Stereotyping African-Americans and such misunderstandings can be caused by a lack of exposure to minorities, according to Earle. “Sometimes our peers here don’t mean to be semi-racist or stereotypical, but there aren’t a lot of us, so they are only able to address us,” she said.

The graduating class board found themselves in a controversy over cultural sensitivity last month while conducting the Senior Pop Polls, a survey that is published in the yearbook. The polls allow seniors to nominate the seniors of their choice to specific characteristic categories — one of which this year was “Most Ratchet.” In AfricanAmerican culture, where the term originated, ratchet is extremely derogatory. In a recent New York Magazine article on the word “ratchet,” Michaela Angela Davis, an image activist and former fashion editor of Vibe, said, “there’s an emotional violence and meanness attached to being ratchet, particularly pertaining to women of color.” Earle found “Most Ratchet” category in the Senior Pop Polls offensive. “Here at Lowell, they think being ratchet is being loud, or vibrant, or outspoken,” she said. “But it’s actually akin to having a category “like ‘Most Asian’ or ‘Most White-y.’”

After the Class of 2016 Board was notified about the negative connotations of the word, the Class of 2016 Board decided to remove the

of connection with the black aspect of my ethnicity was a problem rooted in my childhood; the BSU could do nothing about it.

That year 2.3 percent of Lowell student identified as belonging to “two or more” racial groups. I wonder now, were they still listed as just one race like I was? Not only that, but nationally, the mixed race demographic is steadily growing. The US Census from 2010 shows that the multiple-race population was about 9 million. The overall number from 2000 to 2010 increased by 32 percent. Are other mixed kids, like me feeling inclined to choose one side of their heritage over another?

I felt similarly off-kilter when I visited my mother’s only black family in Texas during the summer two years ago. Like the BSU, my mother’s family was very kind and welcoming and tried to make sure that I felt at home, but my feelings of discomfort from not being equally represented were deep-settled and embedded from when I was a child.

I realized that summer that the internal struggle I had been battling for so long was a search for a balance in my life. But I could not — and still cannot — find a solution. How can I connect with people who want me to feel like I am just black or just white when I am not just one but rather two?

The reason why I feel closer to people who are racially mixed is that they vicariously provide the balance I look for in my family and school life. Sometimes, I wonder if they are going through identity crises similar to mine, and that thought comforts me somehow, even though I hope that the feeling of being torn between two races will not become a commonality. v

category from consideration. In a letter to the editor published in this issue of The Lowell, the Class of 2016 Board apologizes for their actions, stating that they never intended for the category to offend anyone.

These types of misunderstandings can make African-Americans feel unaccepted in the Lowell community. Cultural appropriation is a sociological concept that considers the adoption of a culture’s elements in another culture to be a negative occurrence — especially when the borrowing culture has oppressed the people of the culture it’s borrowing from. In particular, Halloween costumes of Native Americans headdresses, Middle Eastern turbans and other cultural dress have faced criticism.

Cultural appropriation of clothing items also occur in fashion trends. One such fashion trend that exists at Lowell are dashikis, which are contemporarily worn on special and religious occasions in African-American communities. “People wearing dashikis have no idea where it came from or why it is significant in black culture,” Nicole said. Ignoring the cultural meaning behind cultural traditions can offend people, even if it’s unintentional. A non-black student “who wore a dashiki came up to some of us, because we were talking about the dashiki, and said, ‘Oh, are you guys trying to copy me?’” Earle said.

Even parents are reluctant to allow their children to attend Lowell in fear that the school may not be able to understand the needs of their children. “Most minorities’ families are scared about most of Lowell being Asian or white because they feel like their child won’t be supported or helped out here,” Earle said.

Counselor Adrienne Smith, the sponsor of BSU and the only African-American counselor at Lowell, has spoken to parents of minority students who seek academic support for their children. “I tell them about the various supports we have in place, like our CSF tutoring, our Peer Mentors, our counselors, our teachers that have

office hours for kids to empower themselves,” she said. She also mentions the Study Skills class that helps students transition from middle school to Lowell and the Wellness Center, which is available throughout the school day to offer emotional and mental support for students.

BSU also aims to provide a safe and welcoming space for fellow minority students to ease their transition to Lowell and improve their years at Lowell. “We have fun and learn about black culture from current events or past situations: discussions that we most likely wouldn’t be having in our normal classes, but are equally important,” Nicole said.

Current events that BSU has brought up in conversation include the heavily publicized Michael Brown case, in which an unarmed AfricanAmerican male was shot by a police officer in August of 2014, as well as the infamous shooting of Oscar Grant, an unarmed African-American man, by a police officer in Oakland in 2009. Nicole wants BSU members to explore social issues that African Americans might have to deal with in society, like police brutality and modern racism.

Davis finds the discussion that BSU offers valuable because there are certain situations that only people of the same race have experienced.

“Everybody knows about it, but talking to people who understand it helps you more than talking to a person that heard about it but has never experienced it,” she said.

After joining BSU in her sophomore year, Earle became so involved with the community that she is now vice president of the club. Her experiences have taught her that African-Americans face a steep battle to overcome stereotypes and have to support themselves and each other. “I just know that as an African-American at Lowell, we have to make a stand, make ourselves known and give 110 percent all the time in our school work, because otherwise people are going to underestimate us,” Earle said. “That’s in life, not just at Lowell.” v

The Lowell November 2015

v

13