I had it figured from the moment I walked in for just another exercise in high school feel-good, let’s-be-friends mumbo jumbo. Even the name, “No Place for Hate,” reeked of it.
So I decided to talk with the kids who packed the school’s commons for a Tuesday morning assembly.
Rangeview High School in Aurora was celebrating being certified a “No Place for Hate” school, and was hanging a banner to prove it.
Designed by the Anti-Defamation League, the program calls for everyone to take a hard stand against bigotry, bias, prejudice and discrimination, and provides course work and techniques to help make it all happen.
The program is now in 19 schools in Colorado and Wyoming.
“It is not a program that lasts a week or a month in a school, but all year,” said Tara Raju, assistant director of education with the ADL’s Mountain States Region.
“Do we think it will put an end to all bias, prejudice and discrimination in schools? No. But we believe (schools) should get to work solving it.”
At Rangeview, some 50 students seen as leaders were gathered into a working group and charged with putting the program’s goals into everyday practice.
As the school band played the national anthem, I sidled up to Jevonda Wilcox, a 15-year-old sophomore. What is all of this, I asked her, and is any of it making a difference?
She opened her eyes wide and nodded vigorously.
“Last year, my first year, I was a little afraid to come to school, things were so bad. There were fights all the time. Now, I can’t remember the last one,” she said. “It is way more safer here.”
There were times Chris Thornton, an 18-year-old senior, didn’t want to come to school, the danger of fights was so high.
“There would be a fight at least five times a week, either in the school or outside. Now, it is like everyone accepts that people are different, that they understand you don’t have to say something mean to someone just to think you’re cool.”
Nearly every student signed the banner that now hangs in the commons and lists the tenets of the program, things such as, “Try at all times to be aware of my biases, and seek to understand those I perceive as different from others.”
Lisa Grosz graduated from Rangeview and returned 14 years ago. She is now the assistant principal. She recalls the tensions inside the school only four years ago as it went from majority white to an almost equal mix of white, black, Hispanic and Asian.
The ethnicity of the teachers and administrators did not then reflect that diversity. The school went to work on the staff first, getting it to reflect on personal biases and how they might affect student relationships and curriculum.
The student body was divided in almost impassable ethnic cliques reflected in sports teams, clubs and the language in the hallways, she said.
A year ago, the school went to work on the students. “No Place for Hate” is simply an extension of the effort.
“Are all the problems gone? No,” Grosz said. “But they are way down. It’s hard to give hard and fast data, but I can tell you there is a better feel here.”
Given what we were all remembering last week of what happened at a Colorado high school 10 years ago, I don’t really care what name Rangeview gives to what it is doing.
My sense walking the halls is that it is working.
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
