CAMAS — A weeklong celebration of diversity at Camas High School culminated Friday with Unity Day.
About 25 students stayed after school Friday in the library — giving up the first hours of their spring break — to discuss issues facing various groups in the community, and action students can take to improve on those issues locally.
“We can do a lot in our community,” said Abigail Jiang, one of the organizing students.
At the start of the Unity Day activity, Jiang instructed the students to rearrange their seats so they were sitting at tables with people they didn’t know that well.
She and other organizing students then recapped the first four days of Unity Week, and asked discussion questions that came up on those days. The groups discussed the questions for a few minutes, and then they all talked about ways to bring change to Camas.
A common theme in the group discussion was education and starting to change things earlier in students’ lives. From LGBTQ+ Visibility Day, which was Tuesday, the group was asked about providing support for younger students looking to start a Gay-Straight Alliance, or similar clubs of acceptance.
One group talked about how it could help to bring discussions about those groups into sex education starting in elementary school.
“Only learning about heterosexual relationships makes it seem like anything else isn’t normal,” one student said.
Wednesday was Gender Equality Day, and students focused their discussion on whether schools and educators have a responsibility to encourage girls to enter fields where they are traditionally underrepresented. A few students started a Girls Who Code club at the school, and said they’ve received some blowback from people asking why they’re only concerned with girls learning to code.
Tim Fox, associate principal, was at the event Friday and said he and his wife try to let their daughters play with toys they’re interested in, as opposed to only getting them dolls and other toys traditionally considered girly. He also said that once women enter fields where they are underrepresented, there are still roadblocks in place, as plenty of companies still operate as “old boys clubs.”
“These challenges are embedded deep, deep, deep in our society,” he said. “These changes take time.”
Junior Rachel Blair said another theme of the week was intersectionality, or how discrimination and oppression aimed at different social characteristics, such as gender, sexual orientation and class, can overlap and intertwine. When discussing gender equality, the group went over the pay disparity between men and women, and how that difference is even greater for women of color.
Monica Chang, another organizing student, said another issue is making sure others hear their concerns. She said the group can be an “echo chamber,” because the students there all want to be there, and their message might not reach everyone it needs to unless they go outside the group. More than 90 percent of the students there Friday were girls, and the group wondered why it seems like boys aren’t as interested in these sorts of discussions.
“Feminism is also your fight,” Jiang said about her male counterparts.
The Friday event ended with the students filling out a document together with a few important bullet points from their discussion, and ideas on how they can bring change to Camas. Jiang said they want to present their ideas to the district and school board to see how they can all work together.
“We want to promote action,” Blair said. “We want to promote unity within the community and make people feel like they belong.”
The focus on action was a bit different than last year, when the event was held for the first time and was known as Acceptance Week. Then, student clubs each had a day to discuss what they’re about and issues in their own communities. This year, the organizers switched it so each day had a different theme.
“Acceptance, like tolerance, is such a passive word,” Fox said. “Unity requires action. It means people have to come together. That was an intentional change on their part.”
Not only was the week’s name and focus changed from last year, it was also delayed a few months. It was scheduled to start in December but was pushed back after the administrators asked to get more involved. Fox and Jiang both thought the week improved after pushing it back, because the students had more time to organize. Another difference this year was the students went out and brought in guest speakers throughout the week.
“It really opened up their connections with the community,” Fox said. “They’re expanding their network and expanding their voices outside of the school.”
