District Diversity Focus Inspires Campus Club

Every year, Campolindo and other AUHSD schools send students to a Diversity Summit. This school year, the district meeting was in December, but a Campolindo committee decided once a year was not enough, and has been meeting every month, according to teacher Dino Petrocco.

The Diversity Summit was held at the Del Valle campus in Walnut Creek and involved discussions about racism in society and the Black Lives Matter movement, according to senior member Simone Epperson. Epperson explained that some forms of racism are more subtle and pointed out that “looks matter” and it can be “hard to fit in.”

Counselor Amardeep Dhaliwal also attended the Diversity Summit, where students met in groups to discuss racism. ” I think that, no matter where you are, you can try to improve racism,” said Dhaliwal. She said the students shared their own experiences. “Moving forward the goal of Diversity club is bring awareness about diversity and racism,” she said.

Associate superintendent Amy McNamara said the committee members at Campolindo have turned the summit into the Diversity club in order to meet more than once and year and focus on issues specific to their campus. Their latest meeting was a debrief on January 5 , in which members reported on the discussions at the district summit.

Next month the club will have another meeting about racism, how to fix it, and how to spread awareness. Club member Rachel Brickman believes that the campus challenges with racism are mostly micro-aggressions, which are basically just small slurs, and that the people who say them probably don’t mean it most of the time.