ACTION: Poly’s Social Justice Council collaborates with Harvard on new ideas for a superior campus and overall student body.
By Caroline Iglesias, Staff Writer
Poly consistently strives to make a safer campus and a better learning environment for all students. These ideals are represented in the creation of Poly’s Social Justice Council, which had its first meeting on September 2, 2015.
Poly’s Social Justice Council was developed by Principal Dr. Michael Roe in order to polish, generate and/or abolish existing school policies. Roe’s vision is to create a campus that is ideal through the eyes of students. Unlike other rule-making organizations on campus, this council consists of 13 volunteer students who are collaborating with Harvard University to develop new student-based policies.
The goal of their first meeting was to establish the foundation for their future endeavours throughout the year. “We are trying to get to know each other and to learn our strengths and weaknesses so that we can use them to our advantage to make the school a better place and just help everyone overall,” McKenna Elton (11) said. At this first meeting, several different topics were discussed. Their first major area of emphasis was trying to motivate students to pursue various things after high school. Modern day students are assigned huge amounts of homework in challenging Advanced Placement (AP) courses, which creates disinterested students and can cause a hatred of school. However, this can also motivate students who are not in AP classes. To help mitigate this, they suggested “bringing students from colleges to Poly to speak with kids who have similar interests as their major […] as well as explaining to Poly kids that there is life after graduating,” Veronica Poston (11) expressed.
Another major area discussed was the prevention of gossiping and bullying both on and off campus. Gossiping and bullying have been staples of high school for years, and this council aims to end this form of divisiveness amongst students. “We were collaborating with Harvard and working with [the] Riverside Police Department as well as some attorneys to help us in case of outbreaks like the Burnbook,” Elton said. The Burnbook application was the center of an anonymous, cyberbullying scandal involving several Poly students which drew the attention of school administration and law enforcement. Over recent years, many campaigns and organizations have been created across the United States to help end this harassment. Unfortunately, students continue to engage in bullying and, as a result, other solutions are in demand.
Above all, the Social Justice Council hopes to create an impact in the Poly community. “Being in a room with all of those brilliant minds really made me feel that we were on to something,” Cassidy Ballard (11) expressed. The council signals a bright future to come, a future built on motivation and unity.