By Kaitlyn Fehr and Cameron Sheasley As our political climate becomes more and more agitated by the fire and flames of hate speech, many schools have updated their school rules and tolerance policies to ensure they can provide a safe and accommodating environment for their students. Wilson, being no exception, has recently updated its dress code in an effort to keep the environment friendly. According to the student handbook, the new dress code now states, "Hate symbols are inappropriate as a part of the dress for students in the school environment. In any form these symbols promote hate, are offensive, promote controversy, may have double meaning, may be misunderstood / misread / misinterpreted, and are inflammatory. Therefore, they are not permitted in any form of student attire or accessory." While this is predicted to stop some hate speech, most, if not all, may require more measures. In order to gauge how prevalent hate speech is within Wilson, and what the student body thinks, a survey was sent out to teachers to give to their students. In all, 220 responses were collected, a vast majority belonging to 10th graders; around 72.7%. As for the rest of the responses, 7.3% pertained to 11th graders, 9.1% to 9th graders, and 10.9% to the senior class. As such, the data collected from this survey overall shows mostly the views of the sophomore class, and should be considered when taking the following into consideration. While majority of Wilson students have claimed never to have been a victim of hate speech (75.9%), the fact that almost half of these students have witnessed hate speech being directed at other students (41.4%) brings the question- how exactly do students define hate speech? When asked to self report the hate speech they've seen or experienced, most who decided to respond claimed either to have been called racial, homophobic, and transphobic slurs from peers and even teachers, in some cases. There are also quite a few responses concerning political affiliation rather than insults concerning race, sexuality, or gender. In one response, a student who requested to be anonymous responded that "It usually happens daily, me and my friends would be privately talking about our right wing conservative political views, and next thing you know, all of our classmates are violently screaming at as and discriminating us." This clearly shows a large range of language one might consider hateful. Where do petty insults end and real hate speech begin? it seems to be decided by the victim or bystander, which may cause some problems when attempting to restrict hate speech since it varies so drastically. When it comes to the personal encounters of hateful actions within the Wilson community, a student came forward with a rather violent and horrific story about their own experience, not just having to do with verbal harassment, but attempted assault and property damage as well. A Wilson senior who wishes to remain anonymous encountered first-hand this kind of violent hate speech. This senior had been called an “illegal immigrant” through social media and in person. Eventually, someone who did not agree with the fact that this senior was an immigrant at all threw a rock at the senior’s car. Now, there’s a giant hole in the senior’s windshield and the person who threw the rock continues to taunt the senior and the senior’s family at school and at home. The student body may hold very strong and varied options on hate speech, but it seems like many students had no idea if they wanted administrative powers to be more thorough. Those who responded yes seemed to have little idea as to how the school could change, and those who responded no usually did not have a clear answer as to why they thought so. Perhaps if the entire student body or a sample containing proportional amounts of students per grade were audited, a solution would be more clear. However, Wilson is not black and white, and it is unlikely that there will ever be a clear yes or no answer to these questions. Students who are passionate about hate speech and the tolerance policy should reach out to the administration to institute change. After all, the administration will never hear their student's voices without someone there to tell them. Photos Courtesy Of: commons.wikimedia.org; flickr.com
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Elena Caputo
Hi! My name is Elena, and I'm a senior at Wilson and one of the Editors of the Editorial section. If you have any questions or ideas or if you want to write, email me at [email protected]! Olivia MonosHello! My name is Olivia and I'm a junior this year, and one of the editors of the Editorial section! I'm really excited to write for the Paw Print again this year!
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