School life hasn’t always been easy for Mount Si High School sophomore Olivia Millard.
Attending a high school where almost all her classmates are white, Millard is biracial — her mother is black, and her father is white. She is also an officer in the Gay-Straight Alliance, or GSA, a student organization that supports homosexual, bisexual or transgendered students and their straight allies.
While walking down a school hallway on April 17, 2009 — last year’s Day of Silence — Millard was reminded of the prejudices that students sometimes face. On that day, some students decline to speak, raising awareness of the discrimination that gay and lesbian students suffer.
As Millard walked, a pair of students followed her. One jokingly asked his friend whether homophobia equals racism.
“Then he said, ‘Wow, I couldn’t imagine being in GSA and being black, too,’” she said.
Upset, Millard believes that encounters like these are too common at her school.
“I don’t like feeling like I’m a horrible person,” she said.
Growing diversity
Millard’s perspective is not an isolated case. Mount Si’s racial and ethnic makeup is slowly changing, and high-profile issues of diversity and sexual orientation have come to the forefront in recent years. Events such as the Day of Silence have focused major attention on the high school.
To help Mount Si mature as a place where diversity is respected, faculty have formed the Diversity and Respect Team, or DART. The team currently has a low profile, but DART members are planning ways to change school norms.
As the Valley grows, demographics are changing at Mount Si High School. According to publicschoolsreview.com, Mount Si’s student body is 1 percent American Indian, 3 percent Asian, 3 percent Hispanic, 1 percent African-American and 92 percent white.
Numbers of minority students are slowly rising, said Thomas Tilton, a Mount Si counselor and the leader of DART. That change is not insubstantial, but the school remains a place where acceptance is sometimes slow.
Over the last two years, DART has surveyed student perceptions, asking teens to share their beliefs on toleration and discrimination in their school.
A new round of surveys go out this spring. Last year’s results showed that not all students see Mount Si as a tolerant place.
“We are not without challenge or concerns of diversity and respect,” Tilton said. “There is an undercurrent that we’re trying to get to.”
Part of educator’s roles are to expand student world views, Tilton said. But he admits that changing attitudes would be easier if Mount Si had a richer diversity of cultures and beliefs.
Mount Si students James Cha, who is Hmong, and Lloyd Duque, who is Filipino, don’t see discrimination as an issue at the school. However, they do wish it was more diverse.
“All of the Asian kids tend to hang out with each other, but its kind of loose,” Cha said. “It’s not like ‘we’re Asian, we’re going to stick together.’”
Both teens agreed that they would appreciate the chance to attend a school with a more varied student population.
“I’ve visited other schools, and you can see diversity,” Duque said.
Building respect
DART was created in the spring of 2008. The group gathers teachers, administrators, school board members, residents, parents, members of the clergy and student representatives in an effort to study the culture at Mount Si and promote tolerance.
In its first year of existence, DART members have provided training for staff and are working to build a common vocabulary of respect.
The group now plans to share results from the perceptions survey with leadership groups and plan strategies and activities to start a school-wide dialogue.
“We’ve come a long way as a community with the Day of Silence,” Tilton said. “A crisis like that opens up conversation and dialogue.”
Now, “we’re moving from the philosophical to action,” he added.
Taking action
This fall, Mount Si teacher Sudeshna Sen wanted to break the image of Mount Si as a mono-cultural place.
She hosted the high school’s first-ever International night, showcasing the diversity of Mount Si’s many cultures. Sen took her cue from school assemblies, after noticing that cultural components always draw student response.
“There’s a greater appreciation on the part of the student body about the cultural backgrounds when you give them glimpses of different cultures,” said Mount Si High School principal Randy Taylor. “It provides tolerance and acceptance for one another and the differences of background.”
Sen teaches Japanese, but is of Indian ancestry. In her first year as a teacher, Sen was confused by some of the Valley students’ subcultures.
“That was a culture shock,” she said. “But then I thought, if this was an Indian school, there would be a lot of stuff people wouldn’t understand.”
Slow change
Mount Si’s struggles toward diversity and acceptance have been reflected in the annual Day of Silence. That event has drawn fire from some community members who say it disrupts education. The Day of Silence returns on Friday, April 16.
Millard and fellow members of the GSA say they hope to spread acceptance at Mount Si, leading by example.
GSA members say that when they are ostracized or mocked, they realize their organization is still misunderstood.
“People are saying things to get a comedic response and to relieve their own insecurity,” said senior Morgan Myers.
“Others see it as, if you’re in GSA, you’re gay,” said freshman Chloe Bergstrom. “It’s not. It’s about everyone having their rights or being able to support each other.”
But these students admit that change won’t happen overnight.
“Maybe the hallways aren’t improving that much, but we’ve seen more support from the administration and teachers,” DART student representative Craig Hauser said. “There’s still stuff that goes on, but I think we all realize that it’s going to take time.”
