Lunchtime Dress Down: Isolated Incident or Commonplace?

During the tense climate of 2020 students were left in the midst of political chaos, as they return in person Independent schools are finding that the chaos may be returning with them, courtesy of previously unrealized conversations.

Along with COVID-19, 2020 brought with it a wave of political opinions and tense situations. The Black Lives Matter movement became more charged and with a presidential election looming in the background students were thrown into the middle of difficult emotions and trying times. The mayhem followed us all the way to 2021, again leaving students’ minds in disarray with the January 6th Capitol insurrection and the commencement of vaccinations. Now that schools have begun to try and welcome back a sense of normalcy, a Dean of Students, a teacher, and a student from three leading local Independent schools express different accounts of what they’re seeing upon our return.

“If there are, if you will, sides to be taken, if you wanna call it that, I don’t see any of that right now,” said a Dean of Students. She went on to speak about controversy surrounding vaccines, “When those moments have sprouted you can hear the ‘what do you mean? You don’t have a vaccine?’[reaction] …so it’s there, it starts, and it kinda just fades pretty quickly. It hasn’t been tumultuous or, if you will, no fights or discussions that have been really intense have broken out because of that.” The Dean then went on to say that when difficult conversations arise she doesn’t feel that students are judging each other and are instead coming from a place of curiosity.

On the other hand, an “off the record” account from one of these students describes a different kind of atmosphere: “Just today (October 7th, 2021) there was this kid who’s been saying some racist stuff…but this girl was really upset by it, and she confronted him, and that was amazing and everyone was cheering her on and obviously that kid is now having to speak with administration and he’s going to have his punishment.” She further explained that there have been three incidents that had transpired with the student; his behavior had been brought up in the school’s people of color affinity group, prompting the lunchtime confrontation.

Incidents like this one pose the question of how much support politically divergent students are receiving behind closed doors. Speculation was that the confronted student will be speaking with their assigned dean and it’s unclear if a counselor will be included in the conversation. If the students who are offending their community are only receiving a “punishment” and in-depth dialogue isn’t being had about why other students are offended or upset, the punishment can end up causing more harm than good.

Every school has incidents such as these, and failing to recognize this kind of series of events only maximizes the odds of the social dynamic continuing. Acknowledging this, LAUSD schools appear to be trying to get ahead of the narrative with the creation of climate coaches. Students and community activists have rallied for the defunding of school police for years, and the heightened attention to the unjustified murders of Black people intensified their efforts. On February 16th, 2021 the Board of Education overseeing the Los Angeles Unified School District voted to defund school police by $25 million dollars. That money is instead being used to hire professionals geared to help students, like climate coaches.

Little information is available on what exact situations climate coaches are being utilized for, and thus far no reports have come out about their impact, and the few who were approached for this article declined to comment. The information that is publicly known is that climate coaches are trained in de-escalation techniques, and their goal is to better understand the social situations of students in order to be prepared to intervene when and if fights arise.

The implementation of climate coaches in LAUSD schools begs the question if all schools should have a climate coach. It’s not far off to imagine that some of them may be breaking up politically charged confrontations after the extreme moments students have witnessed in the past year and a half, and climate coaches seem to appear as a logical resource.

So, if deans are seeing things one way, and students are experiencing something entirely different, what resources are available for students?

For one, students are banding together to have conversations amongst themselves that they can then bring to administration. “When the BLM movement sort of really made its presence during those protests, our student body, [and] in particular our Black students, definitely stepped up and created a forum where some of these concerns could be spoken of – and out of that came out this group [of] kids where they formed [“group name”]… and so from that also sprouted our need as a school to look into various curriculums and see where the diversity was really lacking and kind of fix it in some way,” said the Dean. The freshman also spoke on how, once a month, student-led affinity groups come together to have in-depth discussions with one another.

Students and Deans from all three campuses report that teachers are also a sought after resource during this transitionary period. They offer a unique perspective, one that captures both what the student and administration see. A veteran teacher had this to say when asked how kids embrace diverging political perspectives: “I think it’s a process, I don’t think everyone starts at the same place but with the work that gets put in, I think kids get there. It’s not always easy and there are different opinions and I know in [my class] last year, that came up a lot and it was handled as well as I’ve ever seen. And that was 10th graders, which says a lot.”

Resources available to students when discussions or arguments get tense was a simple answer: themselves. “I’ve seen that happen through the years of my teaching years. Those conversations spill out of the classroom and into the courtyard… or into the surrounding areas…I’ve even seen seniors hold their own space when something like that has happened, no teachers involved…so, the tools are there,” he said.

“The tools” are something Independent schools hone in on, and it’s part of the reason they’re independent in the first place. Independent schools are striving to raise kids who will change normalized issues in the world. The tools Independents strive to teach, like being able to sit down and have a dialogue with each other when differing opinions arise, are what’s needed now, if the lunchtime incident is any indication of what students are facing.