Diversity Forums: How They Came About, Where They’re Heading
Toward the end of the 2019–20 school year, as we were finishing virtual classes due to the coronavirus, African American male George Floyd passed away in Minnesota after a policeman had detained him and put his foot on Floyd’s throat for over eight minutes.
That incident sparked outrage and a summer of protests across the streets of America. It also prompted Davidson Day student Jaden Graham, a junior at the time, to write an email to the upper school faculty, asking if we would help her in her efforts to make the world a better place.
Jaden’s email came from a place of pain and empathy. If you know Jaden, you know that she loves everybody. She was hurting, and I wanted to help. Like the other faculty members, I responded to her email saying “Let me know what I can do.” But that felt immensely inadequate at the time.
Jaden’s email came from a place of pain and empathy. If you know Jaden, you know that she loves everybody. She was hurting, and I wanted to help. Like the other faculty members, I responded to her email saying “Let me know what I can do.” But that felt immensely inadequate at the time.
Fast forward to the beginning of the 2020–21 school year. Jaden was now a senior who would soon be voted in as President of the Student Government Association. As a school community, we were back in the building, thanks to the efforts and sacrifices of many administrators and staff members. One day in late August, I was in a Zoom meeting of the Diversity Task Force––a group of parents, teachers, students, and administrators, created in March of 2020 by Wes Wehunt and led by Michelle Mullineaux, that was formed with the purpose of implementing one of our school’s initiatives, which was to address issues of diversity in our school community.
While we were brainstorming ideas for how to phrase the Task Force’s mission statement, one of the students on the Task Force, Sydney Brown, asked a seemingly random question about how we would be addressing the November election and all the possible fallout that could come with it. She had mentioned that, in the aftermath of the 2016 election, students had said some hurtful and even cruel things to each other, and she didn’t want to see a repeat of that.
As she spoke, it became clear to me that Sydney couldn’t care less about a mission statement; she wanted to know what we were going to do. So, between that moment and Jaden’s email from the previous spring, I felt like I had to do something. Students were looking to adults for guidance, and letting them down was not an option.
While we were brainstorming ideas for how to phrase the Task Force’s mission statement, one of the students on the Task Force, Sydney Brown, asked a seemingly random question about how we would be addressing the November election and all the possible fallout that could come with it. She had mentioned that, in the aftermath of the 2016 election, students had said some hurtful and even cruel things to each other, and she didn’t want to see a repeat of that.
As she spoke, it became clear to me that Sydney couldn’t care less about a mission statement; she wanted to know what we were going to do. So, between that moment and Jaden’s email from the previous spring, I felt like I had to do something. Students were looking to adults for guidance, and letting them down was not an option.
That night, I found myself thinking about the Alumni Forums that Upper School Director Michael Smith has organized the past few years. Each January, shortly after we return to school after the holiday break, and many recent alumni are still in town because their colleges have yet to return to classes, Mr. Smith asks a panel of students to come and talk to the upper school students about the college experience and what they would do differently in high school considering what they know now. So, as I lay in bed, I found myself thinking, maybe we could do something like those alumni forums, except the focus could be on topics having to do with diversity. At that moment, lying in my bed in the dark, the idea for the Diversity Forums was born.
Soon thereafter, I talked with Jaden and Sydney about my idea, and they were all for it. We took our idea to Head of School Pete Moore, who had been on the job for less than two months, and he was all for it as well. The vision was to do a series of forums on a variety of topics throughout the school year and to keep it going beyond this school year. We agreed that the first forum should be on the African American experience, considering all the racial strife and racially-charged social unrest that was poisoning our country. We targeted the second week of September for the first forum. That would give us time to plan and find panelists and get the word out to the Upper School community well ahead of time.
But I think it was the very next day when news broke of another African American male being shot in the back seven times by police in Wisconsin, sparking more protests and outrage and a fresh new wave of racial discord. As an African American male myself, I was feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders.
And that night, Jaden texted me, and though I don’t remember the words that she wrote, I do remember the sad-face emoji with a tear dripping from one of the eyes. The next morning, I found Jaden before the start of the first class and said to her, “Let’s go talk to Mr. Moore now, and see if we can get a forum on the schedule for tonight. In my mind, the country was, for all intents and purposes, in a state of emergency.
Going through another school day like everything was okey-dokey wouldn’t sit well with me. I had taught at a school before where major issues were ignored, where, after the 9/11 tragedy, we just had an ordinary school day as if nothing had happened. Students were crying in the hallways but we just kept grinding out class after class. We had no special assembly or anything. It was business as usual. I didn’t want to go through anything like that again.
And that night, Jaden texted me, and though I don’t remember the words that she wrote, I do remember the sad-face emoji with a tear dripping from one of the eyes. The next morning, I found Jaden before the start of the first class and said to her, “Let’s go talk to Mr. Moore now, and see if we can get a forum on the schedule for tonight. In my mind, the country was, for all intents and purposes, in a state of emergency.
Going through another school day like everything was okey-dokey wouldn’t sit well with me. I had taught at a school before where major issues were ignored, where, after the 9/11 tragedy, we just had an ordinary school day as if nothing had happened. Students were crying in the hallways but we just kept grinding out class after class. We had no special assembly or anything. It was business as usual. I didn’t want to go through anything like that again.
Jaden and I walked into Mr. Moore’s office just as he was entering it himself. He allowed us to talk with him right then and there, offering us seats at his office table. We explained to him our proposal for an “emergency” forum. He listened to us, offered his ideas as to how we could shape it, and the three of us basically put our foot on the gas, and hoped for the best.
So that first forum took place on Thursday, Aug. 27, on a Zoom call set up by Mr. Moore. Despite the extremely short notice, close to 100 people joined the call, and we had a wonderful open discussion that was rooted in the recent racial tensions but that ended up covering a variety of topics, and it was great to see how comfortable people felt being honest about their feelings, being real with each other, and supporting each other.
The second forum, which was also the first planned forum, took place on Tuesday, September 15, and focused on the African American experience. Panelists included me, Athletic Director Ron Johnson (athletic director), Sydney Brown '21, Jaden Graham '21, Faculty Member Noel Freidline, and my daughter, Sanura McGill '16.
The third forum, which took place on Thursday, Oct. 8, focused on the Jewish American experience. Panelists for that one were Faculty Member Jessica Phipps, myself, Sloane Fuhr '22, Gussie Fuhr '25, Parent Melody Fuhr, and Abbie Gordon '25.
Since the most recent forum, the Upper School has formed a Student Diversity Council, led by seniors Jaden Graham, Sydney Brown, and Katherine Nikolich. In one of that group’s meetings, students were asked which topics they would like to hear discussed in future forums. At the top of the list was the LGBTQ+ Experience, so that will be the topic of the next forum, which will take place on Thursday, Nov. 19.
The plan is to continue to have forums once per month (except in December due to our exam schedule) for the rest of the school year, and to make these forums a regular thing at Davidson Day for the foreseeable future.
The plan is to continue to have forums once per month (except in December due to our exam schedule) for the rest of the school year, and to make these forums a regular thing at Davidson Day for the foreseeable future.
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©2020 Davidson Day School. All Rights Reserved.
©2020 Davidson Day School. All Rights Reserved.