Something I have always noticed in the Allendale Columbia judiciary system is that not all people are equal. Some are guilty till proven innocent and some are just innocent no matter the circumstance . This is something that the may term I attended in my ninth grade year attempted to fix. We tried to fix this through creating a strict code of conduct for all students and teachers. This code of conduct was also meant to be peer enforce, so every rule we came up with needed to justifiable, otherwise it might be hard to enforce the them.
Another objective of our group was to create a petition for a restorative space a school. I wrote the opener paragraph for the petition as well as gathered the signatures of students with the help of another student in teh class. The opener paragraph read as follows:
We, the AC student Youth Healing Hate Group / Student Leadership May Term, request that the glass box in the library be reserved next year as a restorative space. We ask this so that we may better resolve student conflicts with restorative practices and have a space for students in times of need. This space could also be used for judiciary and student leadership activity.
Students will benefit from this space because they will have a space where they can have a space to process difficult emotions and get support from peers and mentors. They can also resolve conflicts with students and teachers alike in this space. To summarize it will create a more peaceful community, create more stable relationships within the community and create a safe space for all.
In writing your signature below you are starting a wave of change in our school that will bring about a new era of restorative justice and safety for all students, regardless of their identity.
Overall the petition did extremely well and collected over 100 signature from all sorts of individuals within the school. I hope that one day this signature do convince higher ups to give us a restorative space for student lead work like this.
Another thing I did during the course of this may term was finish up my new pride flag project for the lower school and create a whole bunch of pride flag phone backgrounds in recognition of pride month.
In the future I would like to continue working with the Youth Healing Hate group, the judiciary committee, the student leadership team and possibly lead/co-lead an affinity group within my school. More specifically I would like to lead the GSA (gender sexuality alliance) affinity group and do other social activism within the community.
Heres what the slices look like now:
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