Dec. 2022 | Vol. 106, Issue 5

Every aspect of the word: Safety at ETHS

A year ago today, ETHS went on hard lockdown. It started midway through first period with a code white, or a soft lockdown— students were already tense with COVID-19 cases spiking and the semester about to end. Soon, the school was buzzing with confusion and speculation.

The next period, the loudspeaker’s chimed yet again, and then-Superintendent Dr. Eric Witherspoon announced a code red, also known as a hard lockdown, in which everyone in the building was instructed to hide wherever they were until given the all clear. Students were given little information for hours, and rumors spread about a possible school shooting.

Two and a half hours later, when the all clear was finally given and Witherspoon shared what had happened, two students found with guns, emotions remained high.

“It was just fear the entire time,” senior Alice Lavan shared at the time. “I think, at a certain point, I was just so overwhelmed and anxious, and the emotions had just built up so much that any good news wasn’t really going to make me feel better.”

Eleven months later, in November, ETHS students and families received a “Community Notice” via email. It explained that a student had brought a loaded gun to school that day, and that there was “no knowledge of any threat or any danger to staff or students.”

The next morning, students heard that same loudspeaker chime, and Dr. Marcus Campbell, the current superintendent, addressed not only the events of the day prior but also mounting concerns throughout the community about how to make ETHS safe.

“I want to be clear about a goal of ours, and hopefully all of us will share this: let’s keep weapons out of ETHS. I don’t want metal detectors. I don’t like what they mean; I don’t like what they would make the school feel like. Logistically, they’re a mess to implement. There are many, many problems with it. And when we have measures like that, it compromises all of our humanity. I trust you to make the right choice not to bring weapons to school. But if we continue to find them, we’re going to have to find ways to keep them technically out of

ETHS.”

In the space between these two announcements, the discourse on safety—in both schools and the broader community—has shifted in many ways. Campbell’s first day as the district superintendent was July 5, the day after a mass shooting at the Highland Park parade. One of his first actions as the superintendent was expressing sympathy for those lost. Last year, a shooting at the Mobil on Green Bay Road left five teenagers shot, one of which died. More recently, at the McDonalds only a block away from ETHS, shots were fired after school. These are only a few of the gun-related incidents in and around the Evanston community.

Simultaneously, ETHS has been grappling with the relationship between safety and discipline. After COVID-19, the school reworked policies to allow leniency as students readjusted to in person education. But this year, the school administration has reversed many of those rules and put in place policies aimed at what many on the administrative team have referred to as ‘loving accountability,’ with the aim of increasing student academic success. However, many students have focused less on the rationale behind these policies and more on the consequences. From policies barring phones from classrooms to stricter rules around lunch and tardies, students have expressed feeling more controlled and more surveilled.

While students are having those conversations, the discussions among the adult community around ETHS are often focused on a different set of issues. At the Nov. 14 school board meeting, staff members communicated a problem with ‘in-school truants,’ a term for students who are showing up to school every day but not attending class. Administrators and teachers are working to help support students who struggled during online learning while also making adjustments to make the school physically safer.

Just last week, Principal Taya Kinzie sent home an email to students and families that listed out the changes that have been made, while also adding that the school will “continue to look at layers of deterrence. This includes sophisticated weapons detection systems that can maximize both our wellbeing and our human-

ity.”

As the school negotiates how to make itself physically safe and support academic success, there is the question of who historically has felt safe at ETHS. According to the 5Essentials survey, a yearly survey schools distribute to determine how well they are doing across five core elements of the school experience as determined by researchers at the University of Chicago, Black students at ETHS have reported feeling the most unsafe at school out of any racial group the survey accounts for over the last four years. Black ETHS students’ responses to questions about safety in and around school yielded a score of 36 from 5Essentials, compared to white ETHS students’ score of 45. Over the last four years, Black students have consistently reported feeling the least safe out of any racial group at ETHS.

It is a year to the day of ETHS’ hard lockdown. Heading into 2023 and beyond, the school’s efforts to protect students’ physical safety may be in tension with supporting the emotional safety of its most marginalized students. As a community, we are living through a moment where we are forced to reexamine our personal relationship with safety and ask ourselves what we need to do to make our school and community safe in every aspect of the word.

In this issue, each story will examine one aspect of safety in Evanston or ETHS. Each piece can stand on its own, but we’ve created this set of stories as a whole to illustrate our attempt at a nuanced, in-depth portrait of safety in our community. We’ve placed pieces about the connections created between safety officers and students next to articles about the way that safety presence can create discomfort for many, and pieces about ETHS setting the stage for positive change next to critiques of its policies. We hope that you take the time to read as many of these pieces as possible, identify the broader trends and tensions that exist and consider the vision of this community that we have presented you with alongside your own views and experiences.

By Ahania Soni Executive Editor

Photo by Stella Hanson

When speaking about safety, we tend to hear the word “after.” “After Columbine,” “After September 11th,” “After Sandy Hook,” etc. We use these scarring events as markers to gauge dramatic shifts. We focus on the post-event atmosphere, but never the before. When the ETHS and broader Evanston community discusses safety, many of us fall back into this language: “After Highland Park,” “After the gas station shooting” and “After December 16th.” But the reality is, there are students that have felt unsafe at ETHS before all of these events, and many of those students are from marginalized communities.

Conversations about safety at ETHS are happening between students, parents and guardians, teachers and administrators, and The Evanstonian has a commitment to the Evanston community to thoroughly and intentionally address this topic. Too often, these discussions are solely driven by measures to make school physically protected from violence, and in the process, the conversation becomes dominated by policies and practices that yield fear, surveillance and control. That said, ETHS will not be a truly safe place until marginalized students are free from excessive policing and discipline within their educational experience.

This begins with acknowledgement of past and present injustice, conscious community building and deliberate policies to change the current climate surrounding safety at ETHS. Recently, the administration has instilled policies that have contributed to a culture of fear. These policies include an uptick in surveillance, an increased focus on policing the hallways and ‘in school truants’ as well as a harsher procedure surrounding disciplinary infractions such as being tardy or having a phone in class. ETHS students should be able to follow the rules, because they trust the people who made them, rather than fear those in charge.

The first step in building trust is clear communication and transparency. The school needs to increase its education surrounding expectations for students and what will follow in the event that these expectations are compromised. This includes advertising the importance of the Pilot and carefully breaking down the key ele-

ments of the Pilot in digestible formats for students, potentially through teachers, announcements and/or emails. In addition, we also urge the administration to carefully reconsider what offenses are eligible for expulsion and how that information is organized in the Pilot. For example, on page 38 of the Pilot, pepper spray is listed as a prohibited item, which is not noted as eligible for expulsion. However, on page 41, pepper spray is categorized under weapons, which can warrant expulsion for up to two calendar years. This conflicting information creates a lack of clarity for students reading the handbook. In our investigation of this topic, we interviewed two separate students who had no previous disciplinary violations and complied with the administration after being found with pepper spray on their person, yet they were given a recommendation for expulsion. This lack of clarity poses the question: when does ETHS choose expulsion and why? Statistics show that the vast majority of suspensions and expulsions are administered to students of color, which we explore later in this issue. In order to bridge this gap, the administration must take measures to prevent students of color from being eligible for expulsion and revise the severity of punishments that students receive based on their infraction.

To be clear, The Evanstonian does not condone any violation of the school’s code of conduct, but at a school full of teenagers, mistakes are bound to happen in addition to violation s with intent, and there needs to be a careful and equitable procedure in place to appropriately manage these occurrences. When a student is convicted of a school offense, the administration must practice full transparency throughout every stage of the disciplinary process. Many students do not know their options and rights when it comes to this corrective procedure, and it is the administration’s responsibility to fully and honestly reveal this information to students. Misconceptions about Pilot policy and the appeal process drive students to accept consequences that they do not believe align with their behavior. Students at ETHS are being sent to attend school at a different location, because when presented with this option in lieu

of further consequence, they can be coerced to believe that if they do not accept this deal, they will be expelled. These students do not know who to talk to and what support they have available to them, and therefore, they are disadvantaged throughout this process.

Broadly, because of these aforementioned factors, our current discipline system does not work. This process should be student-centered and equitable, but instead, it is often impersonal and discriminatory. A possible solution to this is a peer jury, with which some districts across the country report having found success, or the school could consider any of the plethora of restorative justice practices that are being implemented in other places. In 2016, when ETHS made the leap of changing the school dress code, the administration replicated the recommended dress code by the Oregon National Organization for Women in order to create an effective new model. In changing the current discipline policy, we expect the administration to, once again, use procedural models that are built on the foundation of equity to form a thoughtful and effective revised structure. In addition, when a student endures a disciplinary consequence that excludes them from attending school at ETHS, the administration must provide more support to help them return to ETHS classrooms.

Following a return from a long suspension or alternative schooling program, students are often left feeling isolated and sometimes unsupported. We advise the administration to establish a reintegration program to confirm that a student is in a healthy state of mind and feels prepared to return to ETHS. Part of this may include initiating a meeting between the student and a school mental health professional to equip the student with the proper resources to return to school. In a school with over 3,600 students, the administration must go the extra mile to protect students and their social-emotional wellbeing with individualized support.

We understand that physical safety is a priority. The Evanstonian does not attempt to conceal or underplay the suffering that gun violence has infected our nation with, nor the right to a physically safe school. We acknowledge that safety

in high schools is a national concern, and the community has a right to emotionally and assertively invest in it. Physical safety must be a priority, but it cannot be prioritized over mental and emotional safety of students. They must be co-existing forces, and that is the balance that we ask the administration to conscientiously reflect upon and integrate into ETHS procedure.

We would like to acknowledge our position when analyzing this topic, which has historically disserviced students of color at a disproportionate rate in comparison to their white counterparts. As a primarily white editorial board and publication, we acknowledge that white students have not been historically disenfranchised by the policies and procedures we discuss in this issue, and as a result, our personal experiences affect our ability to accurately report on these stories and see our identities reflected in these pieces.

We recognize that the safety concerns we investigate throughout this issue pertain to high schools across the nation, and we are privileged that we have the resources at ETHS to address this topic in a meaningful manner. However, at a school and a community that has been nationally recognized as leaders for change, it is shameful that despite having the awareness and the capability to create policies that reinforce empathy, we still find ourselves producing policies that dehumanize marginalized students. ETHS must do better.

As you engage with this issue, it is vital that the conversation does not end here. The Evanstonian recognizes that safety in high schools is a nuanced topic, and we have not at all addressed all aspects of this issue. The community and the administration must commit to tackle this historically significant topic through ongoing reflection, dialogue and action. We have a long way to go to make school a safe space, both physically and emotionally for all students, but we hope that our December issue of The Evanstonian serves as a piece of this continuum that moves us towards justice.

Evanston i an

‘We got to do something’

Forty years since handgun ordinance, Evanston still seeks solutions to gun violence amid recent rise in incidents

By Mack Jones Staff Writer

Content warning: This article contains descriptions of gun violence and its after-effects.

A 13-year-old Bulls fan is preparing for the next school day at Haven Middle School. It’s a Thursday, and he only has a week left before graduation and then his birthday. He’s an eighth grader, so he’ll be moving on to Evanston Township High School next school year. It should have been one of the happiest weeks for him all year. His family had just set up a motion detector light outside of his aunt’s house. The boy steps outside a side door to test the new feature. He is struck by a stray bullet. The child runs back inside the house and tells his aunt that he has been shot before immediately collapsing to the floor. The boy’s name is Wayne Hoffman, and he died in Evanston on June 6, 1997 at 12:50 a.m. Evanston is a community grappling with gun violence. It was then, and it is today. The events of last year’s lockdown at ETHS, and other situations involving guns—from the killing of Devin McGregor, an Evanston elementary school student, the shooting at the McDonald’s on Dempster Street, to the gun found on a student inside the school last month have contributed to a growing awareness of how guns are currently impacting Evanston.

At ETHS, there have been a number of policies, both implemented and pondered, that aim to combat the issue of school safety head on, with the school putting into place new safety procedures to more accurately know who is in the building at all times as well as considering the implementation of metal detectors or other alert detection systems. To understand where the fear of guns comes from and why the Evanston area has been struggling with it, we must look back forty years, to when the Evanston City Council passed its first ordinance banning handguns.

***

Forty years ago, on Sept. 13, 1982, the City Council passed an ordinance banning handguns in the city limits. The ban was in place to limit violent crime in the City of Evanston. It was enforced lightly, with a limited number of police officers imposing the will of that particular law.

Evanston was, at the time, the largest city to ban handgun possession. The law prohibited possession of handguns within city limits. Before this law was passed, 10 percent of Evanston residents owned a handgun, compared to 15 percent nationwide. And yet, the ordinance did not have a discernible impact. Evanston had a 24 percent drop in armed robberies in the following years, versus 21 percent across the U.S. That three percent was a difference of six robberies, going from 193 to 187.

Evanston already had five percent fewer guns than the national average when the handgun ordiance was implemented. Only 74 handgun violations occurred from 1983-1985.

Evanston was a safe city then, and compared

to the rest of the country, it still is today. The most recent FBI crime rate statistics are from 2019, when Evanston had a total of 115 violent crimes. During 2020, the city had a total of 130 violent crimes. This means that for every 606 people in Evanston, one was a victim of a violent crime. Not only is this almost half of the armed robberies alone from 1983, but it is also lower than the country-wide average. Just as crime has dramatically decreased since it peaked nation-wide in the 1990s, the same is true in Evanston. Still, COVID-19 had a dramatic effect on the nation, and one way its impact has been felt is through an increase in crime following decades of decreases. Yet, there have been a number of gun-related incidents in the last 13 months that have led Evanstonians to another period of fear across the community with regards to guns.. ***

In the city of Evanston, gun violence has come in waves. One of the waves of violence is from the mid to late 1990s, when two teenage students and one ETHS graduate were shot and killed on separate occasions in Evanston. All three of the murders could be connected to gang violence.

The first of the incidents came on June 11, 1996, when 1995 graduate Andrew Young was shot and killed while he waited at a stoplight at Howard and Clark Streets in Chicago. Young was a speed skater who had trained with gold medalist Dan Jansen. After 10 years of training, he decided to call it quits so he could attend DeVry Technical Institute. He was slated to start school there in the fall of the year he died.

Gunman Mario Ramos had graduated from ETHS two days before. His accomplice, Roberto Lazcalo, was fifteen at the time of the shooting. Ramos and Lazcalo came to the stoplight on a motorcycle where Young was waiting in a car. Ramos walked to the driver’s side and fired off several shots. According to an old Evanstonian article, witnesses claim that Lazcalo flashed a gang sign as Young was shot. Young was not known to have had any involvement in gangs, but it appears he was the target of one anyway.

It was only a few months later on Dec. 12, 1996, when fifteen-year-old sophomore student Ronald Walker II was murdered as he left a grocery store near ETHS. He was shot twice with a handgun, once in the forehead and once in the left ear. Walker died almost instantly. According to former Evanston Police Lt. Charles Wernick in a news conference, “There was no confrontation. In our estimation, it was nothing short of an execution,” he said.

Almost a year later, it was uncovered by the Evanston Police Department that Walker had been shot by Frank Drew, an Evanston resident, and Jeffrey Lurry. The two gunmen claimed to have shot Walker because they mistakenly believed he was a member of a rival gang. Drew and Lurry were walking in the territory of a rival gang, dressed in all black. After seeing Walker, they approached him after he exited a corner grocery store. Both Drew and Lurry fled on foot after the killing, afraid of retribution for their ac-

tions from either a gang or the police.

The death shocked everyone in Evanston, sparking anti-violence and anti-gang marches throughout the city. Sherry Walker, Ronald’s mother, was distraught.

“I always wanted to be to this point where I could be a little at peace. I’m not totally at peace, because my son is gone; he’s never coming back,” she said at a news conference close to a year after the shooting.

The next incident came on June 5, 1997, the day that Hoffman was shot. The thirteen-yearold eighth grader who went to Haven Middle School was only a week away from graduating and moving on to ETHS when he was the tragic victim of a sniper attack and shot in the back in the middle of his shoulder blade.

The murder was not intentional. Hoffman was shot by a stray bullet that was meant for a gang gathered on the front porch of his aunt’s home. The shooters, Jeffrey Williams and Larry Cox, had several altercations earlier in the day leading up to the final confrontation with the group. Hoffman was not part of any of the arguments.

“It is indescribable,” said Cmdr. Michael Gresham, former head of the Evanston Police Department’s investigative services division in an Evanston Review article. “I just hate to use the ‘wrong place, wrong time’ [phrase], but he took what somebody shot at somebody else.”

Many in the community were shocked by the murders. It almost felt as though they were random, like the flu. Swift and painful. three past, present and future ETHS students had been killed at a young age, without the city being able to see what people they would turn out to be.

Young’s twin brother Sam, who was in the passenger’s seat during the shooting, described the moment after the shot was fired.

“Drew just faded. I watched his spirit leave.”

The same could be said of Hoffman, Walker and many other gun violence victims.

***

When researching spikes in gun violence, one of the questions that immediately comes up is why? Why does gun violence act the way that it does? Northwestern professor of sociology Andrew Papachristos had that same question in the

mid-2000s and answered it through a research study, titled Modeling Contagion Through Social Networks to Explain and Predict Gunshot Violence in Chicago, 2006 to 2014.

Using the underlying principle of Papachristos’ research, the spike in gun violence around the late nineties can be attributed to something called the contagion effect. When it pertains to gun violence, ‘contagion’ is the idea that the change in gun violence trends can be compared to that of a virus. This explains the wave-like nature of gun violence over time. It also serves to explain outbreaks in armed violence, like the short stretch from 1996 to 1997.

In the study which was published on Jan. 3, 2017, in JAMA Internal Medicine, Papachristos’ research team at Yale studied the probability of an individual becoming the victim of gun violence using an epidemiological approach.

“Academics, when they study these things, contagion, or spread, a crime rate, what has an impact? So I started trying to think about how it actually spreads. One of the questions I had was, ‘Do you catch a bullet like you catch a cold?” Papachristos said.

The study analyzed a social network of individuals that were arrested over eight years in Chicago through an epidemiological lens. Of the 138,163 participants arrested between Jan. 1, 2006, and March 31, 2018, 9,773 were subjects of gun violence. One of the other questions Papachristos tried to answer was whether or not there was an element of randomness to gun violence. The answer to that was, no.

“When we look at disputes or the distribution of violence, whether it’s Chicago or Oakland or New York or New Jersey or Evanston, violence concentrates in a small number of places, specifically in the social networks. This is true through lots of social phenomena. But one of the things they say is what type of epidemic is it? It’s not as contagious as COVID or the flu; it’s very specific. It’s more like Hepatitis C or a sexually transmitted disease,” Papachristos said. “You have to do certain things or be in certain situations to contract it,” Papachristos said.

The results of the study concluded social contagion accounted for a staggering 63.1 per-

Photo by Clara Gustafson

cent of 11,123 gun violence episodes. Subjects of gun violence were shot on average 125 days after their “infector,” a previous victim of gun violence the subject knew. The network map looks similar to one tracking infectuous disease.

“Back in the early 2000s, one of the things we did was we took shooting cases, like you see in the old movies. I started making connections between individuals in cases literally trying to map it out,” said Papachristos. This is almost the exact same thing that contact tracers do when tracking COVID-19 cases.

“It’s this network science,” explains Papachristos, “especially in epidemiology, where they use it to track diseases. I took those methods and started applying it to records of shootings, arrest records and other sorts of records to see if I could create or trace this information. It’s contact tracing.”

building was secure, a lockdown was called. While there was no active shooter, the memory of that day lives vividly in the mind of students.

Six months later, on Aug. 28, five-year-old Devin McGregor, a kindergartener at Willard Elementary School, was shot. He was so full of life that his family members gave him the nickname “Boom” for his upbeat attitude. McGregor was so excited to have started school that he wanted to go and visit his father in Rogers Park to tell him all about it. He was just getting buckled in for the car ride home when a black sedan pulled up and fired shots at the family. McGregor was shot in the head. He passed away a couple of days later.

On Sept. 2, there was a shooting at McDonald’s, only a few blocks from ETHS. Although the shooting was targeted, an isolated incident, the event still scared many in the area. It made

school year—literacy, equity, post-high school planning and social-emotional learning are the school’s main areas of focus.

Multiple board members voiced their support of action to prevent violence in Evanston.

“At ETHS, we don’t shy away from difficult topics. [Gun violence] has got to be pretty up there in one of the most difficult topics. If a topic makes us uncomfortable, we still go there, because we recognize that it’s important for our students to dive into these topics,” president Pat Savage-Williams said at the meeting. “There’s been a lot happening. Our students have been threatened, traumatized and hurt; some have even been killed. That’s been happening. Educators and parents have lived with the reality that gun violence and shootings seem to be a part of our community. It’s not just Evanston; it’s nationwide, like an epidemic. It’s put us all on edge. Our kids are scared, our staff is scared, I’m scared.”

On Nov. 9, an incident occurred at ETHS where a student was found to have had a gun inside the building. The retrieved gun had not been fired. Administration, in conjunction with the EPD, had determined that there was no active threat of violence to any students or staff, which is why a lockdown was not called.

Guns have been a problem for much of Evanston, but it’s challenging to devise a solution to gun violence because it’s such a complex issue.

“We don’t actually know why [gun violence] went up after 2020,” Papachristos says. “We don’t know the reasons why it was down earlier, and there’s not one thing that happened now. There was a confluence of things that happened that made gun violence and homicides escalate the last couple years.”

That fact—that there are a number of factors that have amalgamated into the problem of community gun violence— makes it extremely difficult. Every answer has its questions, for example, does the benefit of student resource officers and metal detectors outweigh the possible racial profiling that has become so synonymous with those solutions?

“Experiencing gun violence is trauma, and living with the fear of gun violence is also trauma. Many of our students live with this trauma, impacting every aspect of their lives. Trauma is both the outcome of and the precursor to violence, creating a vicious cycle,” third-year board member Elizabeth Rolewicz said at the September school board meeting.

One of the common themes in the outbreak in the nineties was gangs. Whether it be Walker being shot because someone thought he was a member of a rival gang or Lazcalo reportedly throwing up a gang sign after he had shot Young. However, as Papchristos explains, stereotyping all gangs as dangerous can only worsen the problem. If people think gangs are unsafe, then people will feel unsafe, and one of the reasons people carry guns is to feel safer. It’s a vicious cycle.

“Most gangs are not highly organized. Groups are not like you see in the movie Training Day; they tend to be smaller crews of guys from a particular neighborhood who get together for protection and for fun. Sometimes, they get involved in illegal behavior. Most of the time, they don’t,” says Papachristos, “But conflict is a really important element. So if you’re afraid of one group, your gang might say to start carrying a gun because they feel the need for protection. Gangs don’t create gun violence, but they can amplify it. They can also amplify everything because there’s a built-in group process.”

The group process refers to the connection between the members of the gang. If someone calls another person a name alone, they can easily walk away. They don’t know each other, or care. But when a group dynamic is built-in, everything changes. Another member can say something like, “Are you just going to let him say that?” and the situation escalates. If another member says that and they have a gun, then everything changes again, especially if there are people pressuring others to use it. That’s when the dynamic becomes very dangerous.

The conclusion of the study, through intensive research into gangs, social networks and armed violence was that gun violence follows an epidemic style of contagion, transmitted through people by social interaction.

***

The first case in this recent wave of gun violence in Evanston, what one could consider the index case of the new wave, occurred on Nov. 28, 2021, as the Evanston Police Department responded to multiple 911 calls at a Mobil gas station located just off Green Bay Road. They arrived on the scene to find five wounded high school students. One of them, Carl Dennison, senior at Niles North, died on the scene. While the remaining four survived, so did the trauma from their experience.

Then, a month later, ETHS was put on lockdown on Dec. 16, 2021. The “code red” was called after students were found to be smoking marijuana in a bathroom in the school. When Safety searched those students, they discovered two handguns and immediately recovered them. As the school and the police determined that the

students unsure whether or not the school would be safe.

One of these students present at the shooting was sophomore Ethan Arnold. It was an ordinary afternoon as he walked to the nearby Starbucks with some friends. He suddenly heard three gunshots and started to get concerned.

“There was this big delivery truck right by the Starbucks. I heard a clattering noise, because I guess it broke the glass of the car the guy was in. And I thought it was the truck. But a couple of my friends who were by the McDonald’s ran by, and they’re like, ‘There’s a shooter!’ I was like, ‘No, there’s not. What are you talking about?’ I wasn’t entirely convinced there was a shooter, so I was nervous but not freaking out,” said Arnold.

“When acts of mass violence are repeated in this way, they start to feel more and more [overwhelming], and a sense of hopelessness starts to set in. Human bodies are not meant to be so frequently in a state of agitation. Some people may become desensitized to violence as a defense.

People feel so overwhelmed by the stress and worry that they have to compartmentalize it to a certain extent,” said Vaile Wright, senior director for healthcare innovation at the American Psychological Association (APA) in an interview with The Washington Post.

Arnold is one of many who have experienced this phenomenon of desensitization.

“The lockdown was scary for me, although I was kind of tucked in a room that was far from any entrances. When I had to go inside the Starbucks and hide, I wasn’t as freaked out this time, just because I had been through the process before,” Arnold said.

The many close calls with gun violence have affected Arnold in irreversible ways.

“I’m definitely very cautious. If I hear a loud noise, I’m like, ‘Whoa, was that another gun,’ and I always have an escape route. So even at school, I have a little plan for how to get out of whichever room I’m in,” Arnold said.

On Sept. 12, the District 202 School Board held its first meeting of the school year, focusing on gun violence. There have been numerous instances of high-profile gun violence in Evanston and the surrounding areas in recent years, such as the killing of Devin McGregor and the shooting at a McDonald’s on Dempster, only a few blocks away from the school. These instances have hit close to home, especially for an Evanston community with little experience in these situations. The ETHS School Board met to discuss, among other things, gun violence and its growing presence in the Evanston community. The school views gun violence as a public health issue. However, it was not made one of the key priorities the school announced heading into the

“My first day on this job was July 5. The first thing I have to do is get a message out about the violence to our friends in Highland Park,” saysSuperintendent Dr. Marcus Campbell. “I called every staff person who I know [who] lives in different areas, and I began to think about last year’s events, the lockdown. Think about what happened over the summer, where a 10-year old came to camp here with a gun. And I’ve said this over and over that the proliferation of guns in this country and in this community puts us all at risk. So when the murder happened last year, at the gas station, that set a lot of motion, and a lot of students tell me that they’re scared.”

Tervalon Sargent, McGregor’s grandfather, explained how guns had impacted him in an interview with ABC 7 Eyewitness News.

“You see it all the time, but it never hits until it happens to your family, and now I’m a part of another family because I’m a part of the families

“In addition to those who are victims of gun violence, there are many people impacted by the violence as it ripples through communities. There are many factors that contribute to a culture of gun violence, and this makes it a very difficult problem to solve,” she said.

Solutions have been proven effective on a national scale in other countries by implementing harsh gun laws. Still, it is challenging to control gun violence locally when gun laws are regulated at the federal level of government.

“There should be further psychological testing and to have shown a need for a gun before someone can purchase one,” Arnold says.

Solutions presented in other countries have worked, some similar to those that Arnold proposed. Evanston and the U.S. can look towards these countries for inspiration. In France, the right to own a gun is not inherent in its constitution. To own a gun, you need a hunting or sporting license that requires a psychological evaluation and must be renewed yearly. The punishment for

that this has happened to, and it’s the worst feeling ever. All these kids want to do is go to school and play, and they can’t even do that. That’s messed up. They can’t even do that, and it just keeps happening. It just keeps happening. We got to do something. We got to do something. “We got to do something.”

***

The ETHS administration has been attempting to find a solution to guns in the school.

“I’m trying to figure out how to partner with the city,” Campbell says, “But what can we all do together to help our kids feel safe? What needs to happen? What is happening on the city side? And so the city’s addressing their concerns. They are working with families that have been impacted by the violence in the community. For example, if a student has been impacted by violence in this town, we’ve got to provide them an education. How is the city supporting [that effort]? Our social workers and other mental health professionals are doing a little bit of talk therapy for students, but they don’t prescribe meds. They don’t diagnose. We’re working with the city to get a more collaborative effort going, so that we are all talking about what [the administration] sees from an education side, or what they see from some of the residents rather than just so we have a lot of differing plans in motion. I feel really confident about what I’ve heard from city officials so far.”

having a firearm without a valid license is a fine and a maximum of seven years in prison.

These policies were all implemented with the safety of students in mind

“I’m on the City Benefits Reimagining Public Safety Committee,” says Papachristos. “People don’t feel safe, so they’re going to do stuff to protect themselves, and one of the things they do is they’re going to carry weapons. So everything should be done with that kind of sense in mind. But the most important thing I would say is you want students to feel safe. The key is you need people to feel safe. There’s not one particular thing that can be done, whether it’s just more security, or whatever; it won’t work on its own. I don’t know what I would do if I was running a school with [4,000 students.] That’s not even a question I’m going to try and answer.” ***

After the death of Hoffman in 1997, students at ETHS took action. On Monday, June 9, the call of the wards occurred. The call of the wards is a forum in which council members may raise various issues affecting the community. It is an opportunity for the Evanston community to come together and speak out about difficult topics. There was one major topic on everyone’s minds that night, the murder of Hoffman just four days before.

Evanstonian archive photo

Evanstonian archive photo

For safety officer, job is to help, not to intimidate or penalize

By Izabella Paracuelles Staff Writer

At 8:00 am, bright and early, H-Hall is already flooded with students; groups with their heads together crowded in the lobby, down and up the stairs, lingering in front of lockers and classroom doorways. Who is it that greets them as they enter through Entrance One? Who is posted outside the main office and all throughout the building, in their blue and bright orange uniforms? ETHS’ safety officers.

The safety department at ETHS has a lot on their shoulders—from dealing with spats in the North Wing to reports of weapons or drug use, and overall keeping everyone in and around the building safe. Often, students can be intimidated by safety staff, since they’re the ones who step in when kids are violating school rules or when dangerous situations break out. But there’s more to them than keeping order, of course.

Necus Mayne is a safety officer and an alumni of ETHS. He’s worked as a safety officer for 10 years, monitoring the halls from North to South to East wing. Most of the safety officers actually graduated from ETHS, Mayne says—as many as 75 to 80 percent of the staff.

“It means a little bit more for us when we come back to give back to the same school we graduated,” he says. “We take a lot of pride in our jobs, and a lot of pride in trying to help these kids navigate throughout the building.”

ETHS, like all schools, has had its fair share of difficulties, ranging from mere hallway fights to situations as intense as last year’s lockdown. But though there will always be students who don’t follow the regulations set in place, Mayne believes that the students and staff here care about keeping the school safe.

“For the most part, I have faith in the majority of the kids that go here to make the right decisions. Now, we understand kids make mistakes, and part of being an adult is trying to model for them how to kind of rebound from those mistakes,” he says. “[But] I think it’s a community job to keep schools safe. It doesn’t just come from the safety department. It comes from the students, it comes from the teachers.”

While it may take everyone that is a part of the school community to keep ETHS safe, safety officers are the ones who have to physically

deal with rule violations. They are certified in CPR, CPI (non-violent crisis prevention) and AED through the American Red Cross, as well as FEMA-certified for crisis management. For any type of crisis de-escalation, especially when it’s physical, they’re prepared. But they never intervene in a fight without multiple units present and only after they’ve given verbal cues, Mayne discloses.

“I feel like usually when I speak, kids listen,” Mayne says. “But protocol is, you don’t intervene in a fight unless there are multiple units there to assist to basically restrain whoever the parties are.”

But the safety officers do more than just break up fights and monitor the hallways. They greet students at the doors every morning, scan their IDs at lunch, help track down their lost or stolen items and generally make an effort to connect with the student body.

“[A lot of] the safety officers are very friendly and talk with students,” one student shares. “They break up fights, but they also help students to class. They look out for all of [us].”

As much as the safety officers do for this school, though, there are some things that are left in the hands of higher authority. When it comes to dealing with the bigger issues, like reports of a weapon or a lockdown, the EPD (Evanston Police Department) assists and guides the safety department. But because there are two SROs (School Resource Officers) on campus, they’re often already on the scene before the safety officers.

“I personally have not found any [items that violate school code,] but obviously, I have co-workers, if we do find something like that, we don’t touch it. We leave it for [the] EPD,” Mayne says. “If the tip is that the most extreme weapon is in the building, then the SROs are going to be involved.”

But when it comes to reports of drugs or a physical fight in the hallway, the safety officers take charge in those situations. During instances like basic searches because of a marijuana smell or a fight, an SRO might not be involved right away. In cases like that, the safety officers take the lead. While Mayne does believe that ETHS is a safe school, part of being a safety officer is always being prepared for the worst-case scenario or something to happen at the school. They

have to be able to adapt to any situation, with the people’s safety in mind more than anything.

“Obviously from a safety standpoint, we’re always on our toes. You have to always expect the unexpected. That’s just a part of the job,” he says. “Anything could happen, anywhere, [on] any given day. That’s got to be the approach for someone in the safety department.”

Mayne makes it clear, though, that safety isn’t in the position to reprimand students or hand out punishment; more than anything, their job is to ensure the student’s, and faculty’s, safety. Even if they’re the ones who go directly into the situations, they don’t partake in disciplinary action.

“Honestly, when we look at our jobs, we don’t have consequences or discipline,” Mayne voices. “That’s not our job; that really comes from the dean’s office. We look at our jobs mostly as being mentors and providing guidance to the kids that we can get through [to] on a daily basis.”

Many students can attest to feeling that guidance.

“I think it’s important for the safety officers to have this type of relationship with students,”

one says. “It shows that safety officers are here to help [kids], not intimidate or penalize them.”

Of course, lots of students may not see that side. When they’re in the dean’s office because a safety officer found them violating school conduct, they may not recognize that they’re doing their job, but as the ones to rat them out to the administrators. Mayne understands the latter perspective but thinks it’s misguided.

“There’s a misconception about the department and what our jobs are like,” Mayne says. “We all have a vested interest in the success of our students. And I think it’s hard sometimes for a teenager to grasp that concept. When we come in, we might look like the bad guys. You know what I’m saying?”

“[But] we’re just doing our jobs. We want to make sure that everyone is safe,” he continues. “We have to step in and we [have] to make sure that that student gets help.”

New police chief aims to build partnership with residents

By Milo Slevin Staff Writer

On Sept. 23, East Dundee Deputy Police Chief Schenita Stewart was announced as the new Evanston Police Chief. Stewart, an Evanston native and ETHS graduate, is the first fulltime police chief since Demitrous Cook retired on June 7, 2021. She steps into a department that is under constant scrutiny from the Evanston community, which has a vocal anti-policing faction. In spite of the criticism, Stewart is ready to get to work.

“It’s a great challenge, but I’m very optimistic that we’re going to be able to do some good things here within the city limits,” she says.

Stewart has spent 23 years in law enforcement, including 15 years in police leadership roles. As an ETHS student, she played on the girls varsity basketball team and, to this day, takes pride in her playing career. In her new role, Stewart emphasizes that she will lead as a longtime Evanston resident first and a police chief second.

As I sat down to interview her, she stressed her humanity over her status. “I don’t know how you’re going to view me after this, but you may not view me as the chief of police, right? You may just view me as Schenita: someone that went to ETHS and is an Evanstonian just like you, and that’s what’s important to me,” Stewart highlights.

She brings this mentality in the face of police violence that has ravaged the country. According to the Washington Post, over 1,000 Americans have been killed by police in 2022 alone. Additionally, Black Americans have been killed at over twice the rate of white Americans since 2015.

In Evanston, the police department faces questions about over-policing in Black and brown neighborhoods. For example, in 2018, a 44-yearold Black man named Ronald Louden was bar-

bequing for family and friends in a parking lot in Evanston. Body camera footage shows police approaching him, tasing him and shoving him face-first to the ground. They allegedly provided no explanation for their presence. Louden said he couldn’t breath and he feared for his life. Ultimately, he pleaded guilty to a weapon’s charge, although the weapon was in the car.

The Louden incident shows, in the context of the 2020 police killings of George Floyd and Brianna Taylor, that Evanston is far from immune to the police brutality that has rocked the country for decades.

As Stewart works to build trust in the community, she acknowledges that over-policing is problematic. She emphasizes “getting away from … arresting people and giving people tickets. That’s not how you build a partnership with the community.”

She isn’t just speaking as a police officer; she’s speaking as a victim of the very same over-policing. “I still hold on to a negative encounter I had with a police officer when I was in the police academy,” she says. “I was driving back home in Evanston to my grandfather’s house, and I was pulled over and taken out of a car at gunpoint. That had a lasting effect on me. I can’t get rid of that.”

Another priority for Stewart is holding herself and Evanston Police Department officers accountable for their actions.

“I’m the chief of police. I have to own [tensions with the community]. I won’t blame that on anybody. It’s up to me to change it, so when I don’t, you should come back to me and say ‘You’re the chief of police; what’s going on with your partnerships?’”

Stewart believes that this self-awareness will be the key to executing on her vision for a more personable and communicative police department. She also believes that her mentality will

help officers connect with youth, expressing that youth outreach is an area in the police department that was lacking under previous chiefs, but it’s an issue that she will prioritize.

Internally, Stewart will accomplish her goals by promoting the officers who “embody community policing and procedural justice.” She also plans to create a Spanish-speaking Police Academy in conjunction with the Hispanic and Latinx officers in the department.

Overall, this job is close to Stewart’s heart. Understanding the role of police and combating violence in and around Evanston is a personal issue, not just because she grew up in Evanston, but also because violence is an issue that continues to affect her life.

“Since I was 17 years old, I’ve been dealing with gun violence ... But recently, my nephew’s son, a five-year old, was murdered in Rogers Park. I’m always trying to work as a chief to make sure we establish the right protocol, the right people to try to deter as many incidents as possible.”

This is Stewart’s mission: she exudes warmth and kindness, carrying a passion for building a connection and mutual trust with the Evanston community.

“It’d be naive of me to say, ‘You know what? We do great.’ We don’t. We can do better in any partnership, and I have to be humble enough to know that and work on that.”

Photo by Aaliya Weheliye, art by Ahania Soni, collage by Clara Gustafson

Art by Ahania Soni

Community is top priority for ETHS’ School Resource Officers

By Milo Slevin Staff Writer

During sixth period on one Wednesday afternoon, I walk into the School Resource Officers’ (SRO) office on the first floor of the North wing. I am greeted by two people, broad smiles on their faces, welcoming me to take a seat. The chair is plush and comfortable. Two desks sit next to a coffee machine, with a bowl of leftover Halloween candy by the door. A large orange wall towers over the rest of the office, a stark contrast from the beige classrooms that ETHS students are used to. For the next 20 minutes, we discuss everything from school spirit to horror movies. This interaction and this office is everything that SRO Loyce Spells wants police at ETHS to represent. Alongside the other SRO at ETHS, Officer Grace Carmichael, Spells believes in establishing connections, building trust, and having dialogue with students.

“The bulk of our work is in the counselor, mentor role,” Spells says. “Not to say that we’re not busy doing the law enforcement side of things, because we are, trust me, but we are very intentional about building relationships and being a presence, a positive presence.”

SROs were first employed in Evanston schools in 1966, and their prevalence in schools across the country has grown in the last 50 years. In 1975, as the Center for Education Policy Analysis reports, Evanston was in the one percent of schools that reported having SROs. By 2018, 58 percent of schools across the U.S. had SROs patrolling their campuses.

The purpose of these officers is to provide defense against external threats like school shooters. However, the City of Evanston emphasizes the specific need for SROs to be available and accessible to students.

According to the Evanston city government, “All School Resource Officers (SROs) are appropriately vetted, trained and guided by clear policy in order to cultivate relationships of mutual respect and understanding, and foster a safe, supportive and positive learning environment for students.”

Notably, SROs at ETHS are funded by the Evanston Police Department. This is contrary to most other SRO programs, which are paid for by the school. The uniqueness of this situation matters because many conversations nationally about SROs are framed around the investment that a school is making into police. In this case, however, ETHS isn’t paying a cent, making the presence of SROs much more appealing to school administrators.

For Officer Spells, it doesn’t matter who funds his position. He firmly believes in his mission as an SRO and as an ETHS community member. Spells has been in the Evanston Police Depart-

ment for 20 years. He has seen police departments across the country criticized for their frequent violence against black people. He has seen his own department called into question as well, especially in the aftermath of the 2020 shooting of George Floyd. He has seen protesters take to the streets; some simply protesting to stop the violence, with others shouting that “All cops are bastards,” and calling for the defunding or abolishment of the police.

In light of all this, Spells goes back to his roots. Growing up as a black man in America, Spells was far from immune to racist police officers. “The majority, if not all, of my encounters with law enforcement personally or through family and friends from six or seven years of age were bad. So I grew up despising law enforcement,” Spells explains. “It actually fuels what I do today. It guides me to be the officer that I never saw growing up.”

Spells sees working at ETHS as an opportunity to change the negative perception that Evanston youth have of the police; a perception that they may carry with them for the rest of their lives.

Additionally, Spells is working on a couple of changes to bring SROs closer to the student body. First, he hopes to add the decals of ETHS sports teams to the back of the SROs’ squad cars. Spells is also in the process of changing his dress code from the usual blue police uniform to less formal attire underneath the usual bulletproof vest.

While these may seem like small changes, Spells believes in the importance of integrating SROs into school culture. “The blue uniform and the uniform in general sends this inadvertent message that ‘You’re not a part of us. You’re an outsider,’ as opposed , ‘If you are part of us, you’re one of many in this community.’”

Spells wants police officers to be humanized and not alienated. He wants connections to be genuine and not forced. And he wants to be a resource, not a burden.

“I really believe that you have two very good SROs at the school,” says Evanston Police Chief Schenita Stewart, who was appointed in late September. “And I think it’s important to clarify that because, in the past and in other agencies I know of, they’ve put [the role of SRO] off to get [bad officers] off the street.”

Chief Stewart brings up an important point about the credibility of SROs: some police departments assign their least trusted officers to work in schools. Therefore, instead of doing extensive and necessary training on how to properly interact with students, officers are thrown into schools, essentially as a punishment. This offers a semi-explanation for the viral stories and videos of police harming students in schools. Stories

like the one of Brian, an 11th grader in Philadelphia who had an argument with an SRO about using the bathroom without a pass. The disagreement resulted in the officer throwing Brian to the ground and putting him in a chokehold.

Spells believes that isolated incidents shouldn’t define his role at ETHS. “Are there people who have bad encounters with law enforcement? Understood. But the presence of Loyce Spells, the presence of Officer Grace Carmichael, is not causing harm to anyone.”

Spells’ reaction to those incidents only solidifies his belief in the function of SROs. However, while he sees the benefit of his presence at ETHS, others don’t. Many Evanstonians consider SROs as a threat to the student body, doing more harm than good. This sentiment is exemplified in the work of the Moran Center, an Evanston youth advocacy non-profit and outspoken opposer of SROs.

In a study published in 2020, the Moran Center layed out their argument for removing SROs from ETHS. “When armed law-enforcement officers or SROs are employed in a full-time capacity on-campus, they inevitably become involved in situations where their involvement is unwarranted and causes matters to escalate unnecessarily,” the study says.

This rationalization brings up another crucial factor in the conversations around SROs: the school-to-prison pipeline. The Moran Center argues that the presence of police at ETHS directly results in more arrests, which sends teenagers into the criminal justice system. They say that students at schools with SROs are much more likely to be arrested for discretionary criminal violations like disorderly conduct or battery than schools without SROs.

Furthermore, the study questions the main purpose of SROs, which the ETHS website says is to “protect students and staff from external threats, such as a school shooter on campus.”

“While many school districts have created and maintained SRO programs to address [external threats], the hard truth is that there is no research or data establishing that SROs make schools safer or play a role in preventing school violence,” the study declared.

This is a big talking point for people that oppose the presence of SROs and anti-SRO people who don’t see any reason for police to be in school. It also is an uncomfortable truth for the students and staff who want to feel safe in the case of a shooting at the school.

The ETHS community is especially wary of guns as the school arrives at the one-year anniversary of last year’s lockdown. That fateful morning, ETHS students and staff hid in corners of dark rooms, awaiting and dreading who might

come through the door next. I sat in the corner of North Cafeteria, and I will not soon forget the silent tension and frightful whispers as we tried to figure out what was going on. We watched as police officers with automatic weapons patrolled the halls and the exterior of the school. It felt dystopian, surreal and absolutely terrifying. And finally, after several hours of tense silence, we were sent home. I had never been closer to the reality of school shootings.

Since then, there have been a series of violent tragedies across the country. It has been seven months since the Uvaldi, Texas shooting that killed 19 elementary school students and two teachers. It has been over five months since the July 4 shooting that killed seven people less than 30 minutes from Evanston households.

Violence in schools and across communities has instilled fear in children and adults alike.

Young students practice lockdown drills before they know how to do multiplication, and parents can’t even guarantee that their child will come home at the end of the school day. Furthermore, to this point, there has been no sufficient response to this violence. Parents and guardians would love to believe that SROs are protecting their children, but as the Moran Center says, they can’t promise students safety from an external threat.

So, if it’s proven that SROs won’t prevent a shooting, is there any benefit to having them at ETHS in the context of guns and outside threats?

Chief Stewart believes so. “There have been a few incidents of weapons being recovered on school grounds…if this was a situation where there weren’t firearms recovered, I would say, ‘Maybe we don’t need SROs.’ But I don’t think we’re at that stage yet,” Stewart says.

The way Stewart sees it, SROs are necessary in a school that has had multiple guns found on campus in the past year. She cites a situation just a few weeks ago when a student was found with a gun shortly after the school day ended. Those are the situations, she says, that an SRO is needed in.

However, Stewart sees a world where SROs might not be necessary at ETHS. As a longtime Black Evanston resident and ETHS alum, Stewart understands what it’s like to be at ETHS in the presence of police. Much like Spells, she has had scary encounters with police over the course of her life. Because of that, Stewart is not naive about the inherent dangers of policing in schools. For now, though, Stewart is pleased to have passionate officers in the school.

While many rave about the ETHS SROs, it doesn’t address the broader problem that the country has with policing in schools. However, Spells has a vision for how to combat those issues. He wants to put an end to police department practices that put the least trusted officers in schools. He wants universal training to prepare officers to work in a school. And most importantly, he wants passionate SROs like himself, who care about the students that they interact with every day.

For Spells, the key is that “you prepare [SROs] to succeed in that role. It’s not just that you hope that they will. It’s that the police department and the city along with the school district work together to prepare the SROs to succeed.”

Overall, the Moran Center and other advocates from removing SROs raise major concerns about the importance and effectiveness of SROs. And as the discussion around police remains a heated issue, the best thing that Evanston police can do is stay focused on the connections that they make and the community that they build.

As Chief Stewart steps into her new role, that community is her number one priority. “The understanding that our actions when we wear this uniform can not only affect one person,” Stewart says, “but a family or generations of people that think a certain way. And that is the day-to-day contact and respect [that] we have to build back.”

Looking forward, backward for solutions to gun violence

Hoffman’s killing was a series in a larger portion of events, featuring the killing of Andrew Young, as well as Ronald Walker II, both former or current ETHS students. The butchering of Hoffman provided a spark for students around the school. They organized a rally against violence, which took place on the anniversary of the

slaying of Young. Around 100 people gathered along Dodge Avenue to make their opinions known and memorialize the late Hoffman.

To make sure their voices were heard and that no change would be left to chance, the students leading the rally presented a “Petition Against Violence” at the call of the wards. The petition was signed by more than 75 people, and praised by Fourth Ward Alderman Steve Bernstein.

The petition read, “We, the students of Evanston Township High School, demand action from those with the power to make changes. We demand the creation of a plan which will stop the senseless violence which has engulfed our community.”

“They issued us a challenge,” said Bernstein at the meeting, “We’ve been grappling with this problem for [20 years] and nobody has come up

with a solution. What I think we must do—and we must not wait a minute longer—is to declare a war on violence in this city. I don’t have any of the answers, but I think it’s incumbent on us as a City Council to come up with these answers.”

25 years later, Evanston is dealing with the same problems and trying to come up with answers.

Attempting to buck criticism of police, school’s SROs build trust, serve as mentors

Photos by Aaliya Weheliye, collage by Clara Gustafson, Ahania Soni, Aaliya Weheliye

By Meg Houseworth Executive Editor

Teachers are vital to school safety. From the reassuring gestures given before unit tests to the warm “hellos’’ uttered in between passing periods, educators help students feel safe and seen in a space that has historically reinforced violence, control and fear. Because of teachers’ lived experiences as both students and educators, they hold wisdom that must be taken into account when discussing school safety.

“I grew up during a time where I witnessed [some of the first] mass school shootings. I was in sixth grade when Columbine happened, and I remember coming home from school and watching the news and seeing kids running out of lunch. I was like, ‘What is going on? How could this happen?’ [It] felt so strange to see students bringing guns into schools, and then to see students [being] murdered in school. It was such a strange reality for me to navigate. [When I became] a teacher at ETHS, there was a lockdown drill within three weeks of my first year. [So,] from that time I was in sixth grade to my time as high school history teacher, I’ve understood what those dynamics are. I’ve had this really interesting journey [with safety in school],” says ETHS History teacher Corey Winchester.

Winchester is currently taking a leave of absence to pursue his PhD in Learning Sciences at Northwestern University. In previous years, he has taught United States History and Sociology of Class, Gender and Race. Outside of the classroom, Winchester has served as the staff coordinator of Students Organized Against Racism (SOAR) since 2012. With such an extensive background at ETHS, he has experienced several aspects of the school’s culture. In fact, one of Winchester’s first memories of ETHS related to safety in school.

“In my first year [teaching] I was given a [history] textbook called The Americans. It’s a textbook that students typically receive if they take United States History honors. So I start flipping through the pages, and I get to a section in the back of the book that’s about new issues in the 21st century. And the topic is school safety. There’s a picture of my neighborhood high school in [Philadelphia,] called Bartram High School, of Black students walking through metal detectors. The conversation was about school safety, but with a firm focus on an inner-city school with predominantly students of color,” he says.

Winchester underscores a pertinent aspect of conversations surrounding physical safety in school. Like textbooks, many Americans perceive that gun violence is an issue that students solely in urban settings experience. This not only perpetuates myths that gun violence disproportionately occurs in areas where higher populations of Black and brown students live, but it is also factually incorrect. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, of the 318 school shootings committed between 2009-2019, 140 occurred in urban areas, 80 in suburban areas, 50 in rural areas, 48 in towns and 21 couldn’t be matched. Meaning, less than half of the total school shootings occurred in urban settings.

“School safety [has] been mythologized as an issue that we see only kids in urban settings experiencing, but [students in suburban and rural areas also] have to negotiate this reality where folks are bringing in guns in schools,” Winchester explains.

Regardless of where a school is located, it is imperative that all educational institutions enforce measures to protect students from guns without making them feel like highly surveilled spaces.

“Navigating around [vio-

lence] has been fairly normal in schools. [But] what was very different was how schools institutionally responded to those threats of violence. [Some schools responded] by installing metal detectors or increasing police presence in schools. [As a result,] schools then slowly became a highly surveillanced space. And that was a transition that I witnessed throughout my schooling. So from sixth grade to when I graduated high school, these were some of the things, like going through metal detectors, [that] made school feel like I was walking through the airport.”

Winchester attributes schools’ increased surveillance to 9/11, in which the federal government responded to al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks by developing an extensive security framework. Consequently, this affected how public spaces, including schools, were po-

Jim Crow is a sociological text depicting the legacy of mass-incarceration in the U.S., a criminal justice system spawned by profound inequities created after the abolition of slavery, including Jim Crow laws and the War on Drugs. Unfortunately, as our nation’s criminal justice system expanded to hold more prisoners, our schools transformed with it. National concerns about crime and discipline led schools to adopt more punitive policies, resulting in the funneling of students into the carceral system in a phenomenon called the “school-to-prison pipeline.” According to the ACLU, the school-to-prison pipeline is “a disturbing national trend wherein youth are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal legal systems. Many of these youth are Black or brown, have disabilities, or histories of poverty, abuse, or neglect

“Why is it that when kids go to school, they have to learn how to protect themselves and operate from a place of fear? Also, why is there a conversation about arming teachers? I didn’t sign up [for that]. When I became an educator, I didn’t want to be a soldier or a police officer. That is not the work I wanted to do, and I’m not going to do that. We have to change how society functions, so that schools don’t become barriers of defense against the ills that society has placed upon it.”

liced.

“9/11 really changed the dynamic for how folks thought about safety and security in the nation. Because of the terrorist attacks, the way that the United States responded with things like the Patriot Act, the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, and in the policing that happened in multiple contexts, from airport security to increased security and government buildings, all that also was happening at the same time. So we’ve seen this hyper policing of public spaces that I also think is important historical context to add in . . . So there’s been this trajectory of surveillance and policing public spaces. Schools, unfortunately, given the fact that we do live in a violent society, were also a place where that has happened.”

Like Winchester describes, schools in the modern era are surveilled similarly to public fora. But as schools across the country tighten their safety procedures through the inclusion of things like automated locks, metal detectors, high-depth cameras and School Resource Officers (SRO’s) new problems arise: when safety measures increase, discipline often proliferates, too.

“When Michelle Alexander, who wrote The New Jim Crow, came to Evanston like a decade ago, she [talked about how] there are two institutions that criminalize in Evanston: the police department and our school systems. And there’s something to be said about that. I think what this requires is for us to really think about discipline differently.”

As referenced above, The

and would benefit from additional support and resources. Instead, they are isolated, punished and pushed out.”

Winchester expands on this concept, highlighting the dramatic effect punishment and discipline has on students’ futures if they are convicted of a crime during high school.

“There’s two places [where students] get in trouble on some type of permanent file record. It’s [with our] schools, and it’s with our police. That has implications if you’re in school, and you’re looking to apply to colleges, trade schools and jobs. In that respect, how we police in schools also mirrors how folks are policed and criminalized in real life. If you’re convicted of a crime, and you’re applying for jobs that [record] has implications on job applications . . . It has implications on access period.”

As schools navigate discipline and the criminalization of youth, an important question must be asked: how are students emotionally impacted by punitive policies? When students feel that they can’t fully express their identities from policies that regulate how they physically show up, it affects their sense of emotional security. According to Winchester, these were the circumstances that led ETHS to remove the dress code in 2016.

“[Students not feeling like they could express their identities fully] is one of the things that led us to get rid of the

dress code policy. School safety doesn’t just look like police presence in school, but it’s also how we put in laws. In high school, we have policies or rules [that decide] what kids can and can’t do. And some of that was coming down to how students’ bodies were being received by folks. And if you look at it [from a racialized lens], mostly Black and brown kids were policed more than white students based on what they were wearing,” he says. “Part of the dress code policy said that you couldn’t wear hats in the buildings, and that was something that impacted black males. And [that’s] not to say that other folks didn’t wear hats in the building. But the kids who were disproportionately told to take off their hats were Black male students. White male students and white female students also wore hats but they weren’t being policed for it in the same way. That’s just one example of how people’s identities are associated with particular actions, particular clothing items. We begin to racialize how people are showing up. And that’s a problem.”

The racialization of clothing can impact students in macro ways.

“In school spaces, we don’t always have the opportunity to express our identities fully. For example, we witnessed how ETHS policed bodies during graduation. I think most folks are aware that the administration didn’t let an indigenous student walk during graduation because he wore an important religious symbol of his culture.”

Winchester is referencing last year’s graduation where senior Nimkii Curley did not receive his diploma on commencement day for embroidering his cap with traditional Ojibwe floral beadwork and an eagle feather. According to the Evanston Roundtable, the eagle feather “is sacred and used for prayer. [It] represents generational respect, continuity and responsibility to one’s community.” For these reasons, when event coordinators and safety personnel asked him to remove his cap because ETHS does not allow students to modify their caps and gowns, he refused. As a result, Curley was directed to sit in the bleachers with his family until the ceremony ended.

“[A] safe school wouldn’t create those types of violence,” Winchester says, finishing his thoughts about anti-indigenous actions at ETHS.

For him, schools have a long way to go to become safe environments both physically and emotionally. But in the absence of equitable, safe schooling, teachers and students have curated meaningful relationships to move beyond an institution that historically dehumanizes.

“At the end of the day,” Winchester concludes, “your human connection to me is on a human level, as opposed to a level that’s predicated on power. So teachers and students, we’re doing this work in a way that is based on relational trust. Understanding one another’s humanity [is about] seeing each other as equals in a level of respect towards one another’s experiences . . . If we began to make sure that our laws actually reflected some of these human relations that we have with one another, [we’d begin to approach safety with a more humanizing lens]. But until we examine power, and understand how power is used as a tool for dehumanization, we can’t make power work in ways where we exist in humanizing relations with one another.”

History teacher, SOAR coordinator talks school safety, the dangers of increased security, school-to-prison pipeline

Photo courtesy of Corey Winchester

The newest evolution of mass incarceration begins in the classroom

By Sam Froum Assistant Arts & Entertainment Editor

The United States has the largest prison population in the world, with nearly one out of every 100 people in America behind bars. This is primarily due to unfair laws and practices that were created to put large numbers of Black people in prison. These laws and practices have been implemented in America since the end of the Civil War and have dramatically increased the prison population and damaged Black communities. This practice of locking up an enormous percent of our population, specifically from Black communities, is called mass incarceration, and it’s one of the most important issues that America faces. Ava DuVernay’s award-winning documentary, 13th, shines a light on the historical and political background of mass incarceration.

According to 13th, the history of mass incarceration has its roots deep in American history. It began after the 13th amendment was passed in 1865, outlawing slavery in the United States. After slavery was abolished, the southern economy was destroyed and Black people were gaining freedom. White southerners’ wanted to rebuild

the southern economy and weaken Black communities, so they exploited a loophole in the 13th Amendment which allowed the slavery as punishment for a crime. They unfairly imprisoned an enormous number of innocent Black people who had recently been freed from slavery in order to re-enslave them and take away their newly gained freedom. Mass incarceration continued in the 20th century, further damaging Black communities. Actions taken by the federal government such as Presidents Nixon and Reagan’s “War on Drugs” was specifically created to lock up even larger numbers of Black people. Laws introduced by the Clinton administration, such as the 1994 Crime Bill and the Three-strikes Law, further exacerbated this problem. Mass incarceration remains an important issue in this country, as shown by America only having five percent of the world’s population, yet 25 percent of the world’s prison population. And our justice system still targets Black communities, with one out of every three Black boys today expected to go to prison in their lifetime.

Mass incarceration is also fueled by the school-to-prison pipeline, a pattern seen in many public schools wherein primarily Black students

are funneled directly from school into the prison system. Although Black students only make up 16 percent of students enrolled in public school, 31 percent of all school-related arrests are of Black students. Detail on this topic is given in Anna Deavere Smith’s movie, Notes From the Field. The movie explains how much of the time this happens due to a failure to provide enough mental health support in schools. Many students in public schools, especially Black students, deal with trauma that can impair them academically, socially and emotionally. Acting out is often a result of this trauma, but instead of helping students deal with their trauma, schools usually punish these students through suspension, expulsion, or by sending them to jail.

Another factor of the school-to-prison is school resource officers. Many schools employ school resource officers, which are police officers assigned to a school for a long period of time. In some cases where SROs are called in to discipline students, they can end up criminalizing students for minor issues that should have been handled by the school. This is seen in a real life experience portrayed in Notes From the Field where a student, Niya Kenny, records a video of

an SRO using extremely violent force on a girl in her class for committing only a minor infraction. Niya speaks up about this abuse, which leads to her being sent to jail along with her classmate. This happens in many schools across the country where students are heavily punished for minor reasons. Instances like this only worsen the problem of the school-to-prison pipeline and further fuel mass incarceration.

200 years ago, America created a system designed to put Black people in prison. Over time the system evolved, and it continues to evolve today. A new component of this system is the school-to-prison pipeline. From the time they begin school, many Black children are put on a path that takes them directly to prison. Instead of providing support for children acting out due to trauma, these children are punished and sent to jail. “When I think of systems of oppression historically and in this country, they’re durable. They tend to reinvent themselves, and they do it right under your nose,” says founder of social justice website GEMtrainers.com, Glenn E. Martin, in 13th.

From school to cinema: How exclusion and regret impact our lives

By Lily Roback Staff Writer

Through pain overlooked or forgotten in years of history, some directors showcase the concept of safety in communities of marginalized groups. Art can allow these situations to be examined under a small microscope and uncover parts of humanity—especially ones of race and imprisonment—and explore overall themes of belonging.

Get Out , a stunning directorial debut by Jordan Peele made in 2017, places historical Black issues into a modern backdrop with an all-to-well classic experience: meeting the parents. Disclosing themes of racism, slavery and prejudice, we follow the protagonist—Chris, played by Daniel Kaluuya—as he discovers more about the nefarious circumstances surrounding his girlfriend’s white family.

In the eyes of a Black man, the over-encompassing and nearly suffocating all-white atmosphere is felt palpably throughout the film—specifically in the party scene, in which the protagonist seeks out the only other Black person to feel a sense of security.

This situation is felt through the marginalized communities of ETHS, as well. Classes that spawn close communities, especially AP classes, alienate students of color and contribute to a systematic problem where the majority of students who take advanced classes follow certain criteria. Just the concept

of Advanced Placement breeds an elitist environment that cycles through decades of rich white communities. Rewarding the system by making AP classes more favorable for high-level colleges and demanding a fee to take a test that makes one more desirable for those high-level colleges leaves a large marginal gap between those privileged and those disadvantaged. The cycle continues and stu-

demption shines a light on prison life for characters Andy Dufresne and Ellis “Red” Redding while exploring themes of hope, redemption and the concept of control hidden behind the illusion of safety. Andy is granted protection and leverage while helping the warden launder money, despite being proven innocent of his crimes. At the beginning of the film, Andy is abused by other prison mates, but by promising

on system. Red is characterized by deep regret for his crime and constant rejection from parole subjected to the prison system for 40 years. The Shawshank Redemption does an excellent job showing the depth that those that have committed crimes carry beyond their one defining label and exposing the deep-rooted issues that exist in the process of incarceration. Critical moments of our adolescence, mistakes conjured up from high emotions and new responsibilities, reflect in our permanent records and permanently close doors of opportunity. A simple act of vandalism or drug conviction can force students into worse and limited situations. Even at ETHS, a trip to North Cook Young Academy makes it much more difficult to enter college or the workforce and, instead, acts as a pipeline into incarceration. Young citizens, fresh out of high school, enter the prison system and pay for petty crimes for the rest of their lives all determined by their worst moments when they were teenagers. The injustice also exists in innocent incarcerations, some unfortunately plagued with the promise of a death penalty hanging over their head for years.

color continue to feel unwelcome in these spaces and without that sense of security.

Just as Get Out reflects the normalization of how whiteness constricts people of color, the 1994 film, The Shawshank Re-

able to solicit work from Andy while attempting to maintain complete control. It is Andy’s perseverance, stubbornness and unrelenting hope that fight against that control and eventually reveal the injustice in the pris-

A modern classic and an old classic, both written to bring attention to communities often perceived incorrectly and negatively. The institution of safety, whether that is looking into the faces of our peers or reflecting on a pillar of security in our country, can cause harm to marginalized groups. However, by encouraging that sense of belonging, both systematic issues may cease for future generations.

Illustration by Meg Houseworth, Nina Ferrer

Illustration by Kodie Winkler

Just a 30-minute cab ride away: An inside

By Jessica Sehgal, Bridget Baker, Marin Ubersox, Charlotte Geyskens, Paula Hlava, Odessa Winn Executive Editor, In-Depth Editor, Assistant In-Depth Editor, Staff Writers

Jian Kramer couldn’t remember how that pocket knife even got there in the first place. Could he have found it somewhere and decided to toss it in his backpack? Had someone used his bag and left it in there by mistake? Perhaps he needed it for some project and forgot about it all together.

But, now, it sat in the palm of the safety officer's hand, staring Kramer back in the face: a mindless error that would change the course of his entire high school education. He didn’t expect anything to come of it when the safety officer began searching his bag. He knew he was already in trouble for the vape cartridge that had prompted the search, but he also thought he was a non-threatening kid; he didn’t have anything else to hide.

When the safety officer pulled out the pocket knife, Kramer was promptly given a choice between two options, the first being to appeal to the school board and potentially face expulsion.

“[The administrator] was making it very clear that I had no chance of succeeding [with an appeal], and I would be kicked out,” Kramer recalls. “[The administrator said if I did appeal], I’d probably have to take a year down due to disciplinary reasons, I’d have to find another school and there’d be a huge gap in my transcript. But [the administrator] kept it very light, assuming that [my parents and I] would go with the other option.”

The ‘other’ option was to pursue an alternative education at North Cook Young Adult Academy (NCYAA), and that’s what Kramer chose to do, with no idea of what lay in store.

At 7:00 a.m. every weekday, he’d watch a taxi turn the corner onto his street, always hoping it would just blow past his home and always met with disappointment as the car rolled to a stop out front, waiting

for his arrival. He’d saunter down his steps and find himself slouched in the backseat of the school-ordered cab for upwards of thirty minutes until he would be dropped off at his school for the day. Upon arrival, Kramer would join the line of his fellow classmates to enter the building.

“They would bring us in one or two at a time with metal detectors, and the principal and the vice principal would be there with metal detectors,” Kramer’s peer Luke Jackson*, who attended NCYAA around the same time, recalls. “We’d take off our shoes, they'd first scan our shoes, and then we’d put those to the side. Then they'd scan our bodies, and then we'd have to go like this”—Jackson lifts his foot off the ground and points towards the sole of his foot, which was pointing toward the sky—“and they’d scan the bottom of our socks.”

The students then habitually held out their phones and jackets so the faculty could confiscate them and lock them up until the end of the day. Backpacks were prohibited unless they were transparent.

As he reflects on his time there, Kramer takes a deep breath before collecting his thoughts. “We weren't treated as people; we were treated as threats,” he says. “We had to do what they said, or they got rid of us.”

The Origin

In 1995, Illinois Public Act 89-383, also referred to as the Safe Schools Law, established the Regional Safe School Program (RSSP), declaring that “Disruptive students typically derive little benefit from traditional school programs and may benefit substantially by being transferred from their current school into an alternative public school program.”

Today, there are about 80 locations across Illinois that offer curricula under the RSSP, NCYAA being one of them. According to the law, these sites must be located “far away from any other school buildings or school

grounds.” The act was passed, in part, to provide aid to students who are unproductive in a traditional classroom model. The second component was to manage classroom disruptions and maintain safe learning environments by removing students who pose threats to a constructive educational experience— the latter being a particularly important issue to parents and guardians in the minds of the lawmakers at the time.

“Parents of school children statewide have expressed their rising anger and concern at the failure of their local public schools to provide a safe and appropriate educational environment for their children and to deal appropriately with disruptive students, and the General Assembly deems their concerns to be understandable and justified,” the law continues.

However, this statewide attempt to enhance the classroom atmosphere for most students is often at the expense of “disruptive” students, as the law refers to them, and their education.

The Offense

In order to begin to understand the operations of these alternative learning programs, it is essential to recognize what qualifies a student as “disruptive.” According to the NCYAA website, RSSP works with students who are either at risk of expulsion or have received multiple suspensions at their respective schools.

There are a multitude of offenses that could warrant a suspension, or even an expulsion, at ETHS. However, recently, there’s been an increased focus on violations related to weapons and student safety.

“I think the event on December 16”—the lockdown that occurred last school year after two loaded guns were found in the school— “gave us an opportunity to be reflective of our practices and policies and how we respond to them,” explains Associate Principal for Educational Services Keith Robinson. In addition to reexamining physical compo-

nents of the building, such as fences, bushes and entryways, ETHS has also tried to limit the amount of weapons that are brought to school—both efforts with the goal of monitoring safety. “We really began to promote and market what students should not bring,” Robinson continues.

The ETHS Pilot states that the possession of any weapons on school property, including “firearms, ammunition, knives of any kind, tasers … mace, dog spray and pepper spray” may warrant up to two years of expulsion.

The Process

If found in violation of ETHS policy, a trip to the dean’s office is the first step. Then, the dean outlines the given consequence for the offense. If a student is dissatisfied with their consequence, they may choose to appeal to Robinson, where they may either be given a less severe consequence or receive the same penalty as before. A student may continue to appeal after this, next speaking with Assistant Superintendent and Principal Taya Kinzie, then Superintendent Marcus Campbell if they appeal once again. The final decision to appeal comes in the form of a school board hearing. Meaning, any of these stops along the way have the jurisdiction to terminate the possibility of expulsion, with Campbell having the ultimate authority over whether or not a student is presented in front of the board for expulsion. If he does not believe a student should be expelled, he maintains the right to not bring them before the board. If the student does find themselves appealing to the board, the decision is ultimately out of the control of ETHS faculty all together. Any student who faces the possibility of expulsion must undergo a board hearing, and the board is the sole authority over whether or not the student will be expelled. This leaves many students facing the same choice: either risk their chances with the board or enroll at NCYAA.

Students found eligible for expulsion following Pilot violation can opt for alternative school education.

Illustration by Aiyana Jehan

look at North Cook Young Adult Academy

out-of-school suspension. Most recently, in 2021-2022, those numbers dropped to 169 in-school suspensions and 87 out-ofschool suspensions.

Although suspensions overall dropped, the racial discrepancy has remained a constant problem. During the 2013-2014 school year, 93.26 percent of all suspensions were given to students of color. During 2021-2022, that percentage decreased to 84.4 percent. This is an improvement, but the fact remains that even after SB 100, students of color are disproportionately affected by ETHS’ suspension policy.

Evanston is far from alone in this trend; school districts nationally have unequally scrutinized and punished their students of color, and administrators are still grappling with how to extinguish this trend.

“Yes, no one is satisfied with disproportionality in discipline. That's why we continue to do proactive interventions, including restorative practices,” Robinson shares. “Over the last five years, we've seen a downward trend, though we are not satisfied, and understand that there is a lot more work to do.” shares Robinson.

Earlier this year, Mayra Bazan Gonzalez, a female senior, went through several different stages of this process when she was found with pepper spray at an ETHS home football game during a bag search prior to entrance. At first, she was given a 10-day expulsion and a recommendation for expulsion. After appealing the first time, she was given the option to attend NCYAA as an alternative route.

“When I looked [NCYAA] up, it was very scary to think that I could be going there, because I didn’t think that I aligned with what their mission statement was, which was serving students who had multiple suspensions or [an impending] expulsion. I didn’t see myself as that type of student or person, so to have that be the repercussion of my actions was very terrifying,” Bazan Gonzalez recalls.

Fortunately for Bazan Gonzalez, she received strong support from her peers and the surrounding Evanston community throughout this process. Soon after the initial incident, a petition,** titled “End Mayra's Suspension & Potential Expulsion from ETHS,” was created and read “She brought pepper spray because she had to walk home that night, and wanted to protect herself. Now, Mayra will most likely be suspended for 10 days, put on social probation and recommended for expulsion.” Underneath, bolded words read, “Mayra is a woman of color. She also has no criminal record and is an active community member and student.”

The petition garnered over 2,700 signatures, and after a third appeal, Bazan Gonzalez was ultimately penalized with a three day out-of-school suspension, four day inschool suspension and three days to work on a restorative project with her dean. She was also placed on social probation until the end of the first semester, but she would still be able to attend her extra-curricular activities. Although Bazan Gonzalez was ultimately able to continue to attend ETHS, many students in similar situations do not have the same social resources to back their cases.

When Ashley Williams* came to school last year with pepper spray, she had no idea she was even breaking school policy. ETHS policy equates pepper spray and firearms despite the fact that, according to the Vision Eye Institute, pepper spray does not cause any permanent damage to vision or the eye.

“As a girl, I feel like you should be able to carry mace around, especially, because I was working at the time, so I walk home from work. I get off at nine or 10 [p.m.], so I feel like I should be able to bring that for my protection and for my safety,” she expresses.

Williams shares that she was first sent to the dean's office because another girl she was with at the time had “smelled like

weed.” Once she arrived at the dean’s office, the dean explained they had to conduct a search. When the dean asked Williams if she had any weapons on her, Williams explained that she carried pepper spray on her keychain.

“I never knew that you couldn’t have mace [at school], because I really would never have had anything [like that if I’d known], but I never knew you couldn’t have mace,” Williams emphasizes.

Williams was provided with the same choice as Kramer—either try to present an appeal against expulsion, which the administrator stressed was likely to be unsuccessful, or attend NCYAA for the rest of the semester.

“Expulsion by law means that you can’t go to ETHS, and you can’t go to any school in the state of Illinois, for a year, and sometimes it’s two years you can’t go. Our board’s and my philosophy is, ‘Who would want to keep a kid out of school for a whole year? Or two years? If so, it would need to be pretty egregious,” Campbell says.

Williams did not want to risk her chances with the appeal. So, her punishment was to spend the rest of the year at NCYAA on top of social probation, meaning she could not attend any ETHS events, including dances and home games. Despite her choice in the matter, she still felt dissatisfied with the result.

“I noticed that everybody doesn’t get disciplined the same. I wasn’t a bad student; I never got suspended at ETHS. That was my first time ever being expelled or suspended or anything my whole high

school life,” she shares.

Williams, a Black-identifying student, is not the first to point out the disproportionate disciplinary action within ETHS and across national school institutions.

The Disparity

Altogether, since 2013, Black and Hispanic students have experienced close to six times as many in-school suspensions than white students, and eight times more out-of-school suspensions, according to data compiled by the Illinois State Board of Education. In the 2021-2022 school year alone, 77 in-school suspensions were given to Black students, compared to only 32 for white students. As for out-of-school suspensions, Black students experienced 59 suspensions, compared to only 13 suspensions for white students. These numbers aren’t proportional with the overall demographics of the school, as 45.6 percent of ETHS is white but white students accounted for only 15.2 percent of total exclusionary incidents in 2021.

On Sept. 15, 2016, the Illinois State Senate passed Senate Bill (SB) 100, which prohibited zero-tolerance policies of suspensions and expulsions. Under SB 100, out-of-school suspensions and expulsions can only be used if a student’s continued presence poses a threat to the student body. The effects of the bill are visible when comparing data from 2013-2014 to the most recent data. During the 2013-2014 school year, there were 598 incidents of in-school suspension at ETHS and 225 cases of

When considering the disciplinary rates for neighboring schools, it is clear that this discrepancy is an ongoing issue. At Maine East, Maine South, Maine West, Niles North and Niles West, a higher percentage of suspensions and expulsions are accounted for by students of color than the percentage of students of color in attendance of the school. For example, 4.91 percent of students are Black at Maine East, yet in the 2021-2022 school year alone, Black students made up approximately 23.86 percent of total incidents for in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions and expulsions. That same year at Niles North, Black students accounted for 54.84 percent of total incidents despite Black students making up 9.02 percent of the total student population and at Maine West, 44.87 percent of students are Hispanic or Latinx, but Hispanic and Latinx students made up 65 percent of all incidents. Despite intentional efforts across Illinois to close this gap, the statistics still evidently show disciplinary differences between white students and students of color for many of the schools the In-Depth team looked at for this article.

Two of the key factors that lead to the continued marginalization and punishment of students of color more than their white counterparts are profiling and implicit bias. For senior Amira Grace, there was a day when a safety officer approached her and told her she had to go to the dean’s office. [Continued on page 12]

from Illinois State Board of Education

Data from Illinois State Board of Education

Data

The social-emotional tax of alternative schooling

“The safety officer never disclosed to me what I was doing wrong. [They] just led me to the dean’s office and said it [was] time for [me] to be searched. They did not tell me what I was in trouble for. They separated me from my friend, and I was searched first. They went through every little part in my bag and didn’t find anything, because I didn’t have anything,” says Grace, who is mixed and Black.

“Considering what I know about implicit bias, I definitely think that it was racially charged, especially considering

wald shares that NCYAA is comprised of mostly male students who identify as either Hispanic or Black.

The Experience

Upon discovering their impending enrollment at NCYAA, many students feel a sense of shock knowing that they will no longer attend ETHS. However, the difference between going to school at ETHS and NCYAA is a lot more than just a different location and name.

Once in the school, several students recalled a police presence, especially when

choly mood in school. It felt like all the kids just wanted to get out of there, and it felt like the teachers didn't really care,” Jackson recalls. “It was just very cramped, very small; you didn't really get to see the outside … It was a lot like prison.”

This different experience in contrast to what most ETHS students are used to in regards to their schooling can have significant mental impacts.

“My mental health got pretty bad during that time. Some of it was outside factors, but I think just being in that very boring, nothing happening, ‘do what we say’ kind of environment, it takes a lot out of you,” Kramer expresses. “I remember, near the end of the year, I was just like a soulless drone, kind of just going through the day. … I don’t know if I'd say it was traumatic, but it definitely has lasting impacts on me.”

more focused lens on their academics and behavior.

“I couldn't fathom how important school was until they put me in a situation where I couldn't take advantage of it,” Jackson explains.

For this reason, NCYAA is deemed effective when considering reintegration; after experiencing NCYAA as a consequence, proponents would argue students will be less likely to repeat such actions that landed them there in the first place.

[that the security officer] was white; also considering times when I’ve seen groups of white girls in bathrooms doing what they please, talking really loud, maybe doing stuff that isn’t allowed and nothing happens at all, when me and my friend were just talking.”

Grace’s experience is just one of many that illustrates a larger trend of profiling within ETHS’ disciplinary system.

“Most of the people that I talk to about getting searched by safety are students of color,” Grace says. “When I do talk about my experiences and other students of color’s experiences, white people that I tell [always say] ‘What? I did that exact same thing and nothing happened!’”

Profiling remains a complicated issue for a myriad of reasons, one of which being the internal, and often subconscious, factors that influence which students are being targeted.

“It's hard to address that kind of implicit and explicit bias [within faculty], because it's so individual, and it's so every day, and it's so normal. How do you get a person to think about, ‘Who am I watching and why?’ Some people aren't even aware of it,” Campbell says.

Another contributing element that perpetuates the cycle of profiling is the lack of reporting around these incidents.

“I haven’t had students directly report [being profiled]. That doesn’t mean that students aren’t experiencing [profiling]. If they are, I'd like to know. We'd love to talk with them, understand their experiences [and] think about how else we need to structure and provide that support,” Kinzie says.

However, the reporting process can be more emotionally taxing than it might seem, which can explain why many students may choose not to file a report with the administration about the profiling they encounter.

“In my experience, talking with administrators, even those [who have a reputation for being] more empathetic, I still feel attacked,” Grace shares. “There’s definitely charged language, but that’s always how I feel. There’s always this power dynamic that’s so extreme between the two of us, which leaves room for them to belittle your intelligence without consequence.”

All of these biased disciplinary tactics bleed over into the demographics that appear at NCYAA, an institution that serves as a disciplinary consequence for students. NCYAA partners with an assortment of schools in Northern Cook County, including, “Niles, Rolling Meadows, Buffalo Grove, Des Plaines/Maine Township and Glenbrook,” according to Lisa Fornwald, the director of NCYAA. Demographically, Cook County is approximately 26 percent Latinx and 23.7 percent Black, and Forn-

a conflict arose within the school, which contributed to the feeling of being treated as a “threat.”

“It creates a state of fear. I mean, you’re living in anxiety like, ‘Oh, I gotta stay in line’ … You [have] to worry about all the rules, because you're afraid of the consequences constantly,” Kramer shares.

It wasn’t just the atmosphere and sense of freedom that was different. The curriculum and academic resources available at NCYAA also varied greatly from those at ETHS.

“It was a lot different going into that kind of learning environment as opposed

Beyond academic frustration, the school can also be very socially isolating for students who try to stay attached to the ongoings at ETHS. Students who are sent to the RSSP at NCYAA from ETHS are not allowed to attend any school social events, and they’re only allowed a limited amount of contact to ETHS per week.

“I never experienced something like this, being away from my friends,” shared Williams, whose main obstacle was struggling to make friends at NCYAA.

The Return

Upon returning to ETHS at the beginning of this school year, these students were, again, faced with a completely new routine than that which they had been accustomed.

“[You’re coming from an environment]

“For the most part, if you're looking at the recidivism rate for students who make egregious errors, there is a significant reduction because of the targeted supports offered,” Robinson shares. “All behaviors are typically a symptom of something else. Those may include academic and socio-emotional challenges. In the case where students express a need for more intervention, there are some opportunities for students to receive credit recovery, more mental health support and to have more fluidity and connection in their school.”

Deciding to send a student to NCYAA is not an easy choice to make, but for administrators, it can be the best choice. School systems across America have felt the pressure to keep their schools physically safe, but these increased safety measures can come at the cost of students’ emotional wellbeing. Meeting all of the educational, social and safety needs of students can be a difficult juggling act, and administrators are still grappling with the best way to approach this task.

“Having good relationships with students [help] them be seen or understood, [so that] they don't want to act out if they're having conflicts,” says Campbell. “Those are the things that keep schools safe; it's relationships.”

The inherently difficult aspect of forming relationships between students and faculty at a school like ETHS, is the size. With over 3,600 students, the discipline process can sometimes appear to lack empathy and a sense of humanity.

“Once [the administrator] processed me, [they] moved on. It felt very impersonal, I just felt like another ticket, you know? Another form to fill out,” Kramer explains.

to ETHS,” senior Krish Anderson*, who was sent to NCYAA after vandalizing school property, explains.

One large difference between NCYAA and ETHS is that the former is an incredibly small school, with only a few classrooms and around 10 kids in each class. In fact, many of the classes are conducted online, with minimal homework.

“[The curriculum] was just what you needed to do for credit completion,” Anderson says of his classes.

At NCYAA, the curriculum is designed specifically for credit recovery and improving overall student behavior. With NCYAA’s smaller size and more specific academic focus, not all academics will be necessarily similar to those a student was previously taking at their original school.

“We don't have all of the academics that the public school does, so we try to give comparable assignments or comparable classes. If a student is taking…culinary at Evanston, well, that's something we don't have. We will have to give them a different [class] while they're here, but for all of their basic core classes … we offer comparable classes,” says Fornwald.

This more basic curriculum proves to be helpful for some, but fruitless for others.

“It was like going back to an eighth grade science class,” Jackson describes.

With simplified classes paired with the sense of constant surveillance, the entire learning experience is worsened for many students.

“Looking back, it felt demoralizing because of the level of academics. I felt like I wasn't really working towards my future. I would say there was a melan-

where everything was just handed to you. You didn’t have to think much, you just had to do, but now you have to learn how to be your own person again, day to day,” Kramer says.

In addition to the internal readjustment that must occur when returning to ETHS, there is also a lasting effect on the external reputation that can be hard to shake. Not only can attending NCYAA affect your future going forward, with the school earning a spot on one’s permanent record, but the social effects can persist as well.

“For these kids coming back to their school, they’re kind of like an outcast,” Jackson describes.

Due to the size of ETHS, precautions that are taken to make school a physically safe space can be at the expense of the mental safety for some students, and students, like Kramer, are calling for more conscientiousness when it comes to discipline.

“I was also going through a lot before I got kicked out of school, and my actions were a result of how I was feeling, and the actions [I experienced] in that school made that worse,” Kramer explains. “If [the faculty] would’ve taken into account students’ lives, like mine for example, I probably wouldn’t have gone through as much.”

“I get treated different sometimes, and I’ll see my friends from alternative school, the people that I was interacting with a lot, and they’re usually sticking together, not with their own previous [friend] groups,” Kramer shares. “There is a reputation that comes with an alternative school.”

Despite the various challenges that students face throughout all steps of this discipline process—whether that be before, during or after attending NCYAA—the RSSP can still hold value for some students, including a return to ETHS with a

Editors’ Notes:

The Evanstonian doesn’t condone any violations of the Pilot.

*We have changed the names of certain students and identifiable details in order to protect their privacy.

**The Evanstonian wants to acknowledge a conflict of interest when it comes to reporting this story, as Executive Editor Meg Houseworth created the petition mentioned in the article.

“Looking back, it felt demoralizing because of the level of academics. I felt like I wasn’t really working towards my future. I would say there was a melancholy mood in school. It felt like all the kids just wanted to get out of there, and it felt like the teachers didn’t really care. It was just very cramped, very small; you didn’t really get to see the outside … It was a lot like prison.”

- senior Luke Jackson*

““Most of the people that I talk to about getting searched by safety are students of color,” Grace says. “When I do talk about my experiences and other students of color’s experiences, white people that I tell [always say] ‘What? I did that exact same thing and nothing happened!’””

- senior Amira Grace

“Having good relationships with students [help] them be seen or understood, [so that] they don’t want to act out if they’re having conflicts,” says Campbell. “Those are the things that keep schools safe; it’s relationships.”

- Superintendent Marcus Campbell

Literature teaches students the reality of the criminal justice system

Nathan Kane Staff Writer

Crime and criminal justice are some of the only issues in this world as complicated as the human mind itself. Every individual has their own views on where crime comes from and how it should be handled. We do our best to remedy the ills caused by crime through laws and charities, but crime is an issue of the psyche— no piece of legislation can ever get to the roots of why it affects people in the way it does. So, naturally, we turn to art; and no other art form is better at holding a mirror up to society than literature, whether it’s meant to be read or performed. There are a myriad of examples of such literature, many of which are required reading in schools like ETHS. It is of paramount importance that we expose people of all ages to a variety of perspectives. Following are two examples of literature which, I believe, capture the nuance of how and why crime and criminal justice are so often mishandled.

I recently saw an excellent production of Measure for Measure at Chicago

Shakespeare Theatre. The play’s plot is a saga of criminal justice, and while it was written centuries ago, its themes are (unfortunately) searingly relevant today. It focuses on Isabella, who is a nun on a quest to free her brother Claudio, who has been jailed for engaging in premarital sex. To do so, she must convince the drunk-on-power Lord Angelo—the head of the city’s law enforcement—to exonerate Claudio. Though the play is technically a comedy, what follows is quite a dark tale featuring rape, betrayal and abuse of power in which the city’s inhabitants eventually band together to outwit Angelo.

To me, this play is a masterpiece: Shakespeare casts a stinging indictment on people and systems that purposely mistreat those who they are meant to serve. But he does so underneath a pleasant visage of humor and colorful characters which make the play palatable to all potential viewers— including those whom it criti-

cizes.

A different, but equally apt example is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Instead of depicting the authorities themselves being the sources of societal ills relating to crime and safety, the book focuses more on the prejudice of everyday people.

The novel is set in the Jim Crow South and is told from the perspective of a young girl named Scout Finch.

Scout’s father, Atticus, is a defense attorney who is working to protect Tom Robinson, a Black man who has been falsely accused of raping a white woman. Despite Atticus eviscerating the prosecution in court and dismantling all of their “evidence,” the brainwashed jurors still vote to convict Robinson. While the novel has definite room to improve regarding its depictions of Black characters, it highlights the somber reality of our justice system: people’s lives are too often placed in the hands of those who won’t even give them a chance.

What makes literature such a unique and beautiful artistic medium is the fact that it can give anyone a platform to speak their truth, to spread their message.

Through writing, authors can elevate nuanced issues to achieve equity and justice. In no arena is this more true than that of crime and criminal justice: we need people from all sides to speak their truths in order to create systems that benefit everyone.

Illustration by Kupu Sumi

Hip-hop discusses safety, the criminalization of blackness

Ben Levy Staff Writer

Hip-hop has always had two very distinct ways of approaching social issues, lyrically speaking. The first is through sharp, observant and precisely crafted lines and songs. Take for example Chicago artist Saba’s song BUSY/SIRENS where he raps “Drawing they gun right off their hip/ I’m probably deservin’/ ‘Cause I know they serve and protect/ But they think I’m servin/Or they think my cellphone’s a weapon”, his downcast tone emphasizes his lyrics about police violence. Alternatively, 2Pac on his track “Changes’’, penned, “There’s war in the streets and war in the Middle East/ Instead of war on poverty, they got a war on drugs/ So the police can bother me”. Two artists, on opposite sides of the country, twenty years apart. These lyrics are formed from musicians who have lived and seen the impact of things like police violence on their communities. The instrumentals are downcast, and reflective, spurring reflection on the words.

The latter approach is a bit different. Where the former was focused on painting a picture, this response is more about firing back. These are abrasive, brash and unapologetic. It’s impossible not to mention N.W.A’s “F*** Tha Police”, where Ice Cube raps “Beat a police outta shape/ and when I’m finished, bring the yellow tape,” or Vince Staples’ “Hands Up,” in which he raps, “Raidin’ homes without a warrant, shoot him first without a warning/And they expect respect and non-violence? I refuse the right to be silent.” Just as their counterparts who dissect the things they have seen, these artists react to what they have seen. Again, almost thirty years apart, the perspective through which they examine the problems is very similar. The anger is palpable, and seeps through the tense instrumentals behind the lyrics.

It’s within hip-hop’s disposition to combat the system. For as long as this country has existed, Black art has had a target on its back, especially if that art was deemed “radical” or “revolutionary”. In the 1920s, as Jazz came to popularity as an invigorating genre led by Black talents, the U.S government had schemes to stop it. In the 1930s, director Harry Anslinger of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics remarked that, “Their Satanic music, jazz

and swing result from marijuana use” and that, “[Jazz] sounded ‘like the jungles in the dead of night.” Years later, Anslinger would lead the charge to arrest (and eventually murder) Billie Holiday, famous for her rendition of the anti-lynching anthem “Strange Fruit”.

Half a century later, in a cramped Bronx apartment, hip-hop was born. A product of Black exuberance and the dense New York borough, the music was a fresh new style. Less than a decade after its inception, these communities that fostered the genre, in its infancy at the time, became a target of the government.

The (allegedly) CIA-backed drug trade, and subsequent militant policing tactics unleashed as a “War on Drugs” ravaged these impoverished urban communities. The country changed as prison rates skyrocketed, and law enforcement became more hostile than ever.

Everyone knew that the system had changed for the worse. And as these conditions continued, the music began to reflect that. In 1988, N.W.A shocked the world with their record “Straight Outta Compton”. The album was a razor-sharp meditation on the poverty they had seen around them in a once-Black suburb destroyed by the government’s response to drugs. The driving force of this anti-establishment thesis was made clear on track three, the aforementioned “F*** Tha Police”.

Other artists knew the effects on their neighborhoods. Nas in the early ‘90s wrote “D’s on the roof tryna’, watch us and knock us/And even killer coppers, come through on helicopters”. Years later, on his gripping 2012 track “Reagan” (named in opposition of President Reagan who enacted the War on Drugs, and the importation of said drugs), Mike raps, “The end of the Reagan Era, I’m like ‘leven, twelve, or/ Old enough to understand that s***’d changed forever/ They declared a War on Drugs, like a war on terror/ But what it really did was let the police terrorize whoever.” The Reagan era ended around the end of the ‘80s. He finished his second term in 1989, five years before Nas wrote those lyrics. The catastrophic effects of the government’s tactics were blatant, and changed the way these neighborhoods, Nas in Queens and KM in Atlanta.

Of course, the scope of these issues is much broader. Some of these artists dis-

cuss more cyclical and personal traumas as a result of government policies that create disparate living conditions. Meek Mill’s 2018 song “Trauma,” for example, with the powerful line “and the judge got a hold on your father/go to school, bullet holes in the lockers.” Many artists have been put in jail under the pretense of their lyrics as evidence (amongst other malfeasances, such as coercing witness testimonies). The genre itself, as an outlet against the systematic issues that plague the communities of these artists, has always had a target on its back. Between people

who characterize the music as violent or radical, and the government’s incessant attempts to convict the creators, the existence of hip-hop has always been a protest against the systems that try and destroy it. The musicians’ approaches to the unsafe conditions and the people who perpetrate them differ across areas and eras. Nevertheless, the music stays. It is impossible to ignore these issues and remain silent. The music speaks out, and against, the forces trying to stop it.

Letter from the Editors: Acknowledging education’s origins is key to moving forward, avoid further harm

By Meg Houseworth, Sophia Sherman, and Maddie Molotla Executive Editor, Opinion Editor, Assistant Opinion Editor

When Mayra Bazan Gonzalez was suspended for ten days and recommended for expulsion for carrying pepper spray, the conversations in The Evanstonian office that followed compelled us to investigate the various ways education has operated as an institution— yielding power, influence and control—to create a negative environment for marginalized students. Since its beginning, traditional American school has operated to instill conformity, whiteness and assimilation within its students. Following the enactment of The Civilization Fund Act in 1819, Native American youth were forced to leave their reservations and attend “American Indian Boarding Schools” to aid in the so-called “civilization process.” Upon arrival, indigenous youth were given Anglo-American names, mandated to convert to wear military-style clothing, bathe in kerosene and shave their hair. According to The Indigenous Foundation, at school, “Male students were taught to perform manual labor such as blacksmithing, shoemaking and farming amongst other trades. . . Female students were taught to cook, clean, sew, do laundry and care for farm animals. Standard academic subjects like reading, writing, math, history and art were also taught; however, these subjects emphasized American beliefs and values. For example, students were taught the importance of private property, materialized wealth and celebrating American holidays such as Columbus Day.” If students did not confine to the assimilation process, they would be subjected to extreme punishments, including beatings, extreme labor and physical, sexual and spiritual abuse. Boarding schools also had notoriously bad living conditions. Because food and medical attention were scarce, children were malnourished, overcrowded dormitories proliferated infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, flu and trachoma, and more than 500 students died as a result. Parents were rarely notified of their child’s death, intentionally kept uniformed of the torture their children endured. Those who survived lost their

cultural identity, sense of safety and years of childhood all for the purposes of creating a white national identity.

In more recent decades, marginalized students are forced to act uniformly in schools by way of policing. When the Reagan Administration announced a “War on Drugs” to expunge crack-cocaine and cocaine use in America, it allotted greater power for penal systems to disproportionately criminalize Black and brown men. Unfortunately, seeing how schools have always functioned to inflict control and suppression,

educational spaces adopted Raegan’s strategies of policing in what sociologists call the “school-to-prison pipeline”. In this concept, students, particularly Black and brown students, are pushed out of the school system and into the criminal justice system through targeted disciplinary policies.

At ETHS, this system of policing is pertinent. According to Propublica, Black students are 10.5 times as likely to be suspended as white students, and Hispanic students are 5.9 times as likely to be suspended as White students at ETHS. However, nationally, Black students are suspended

at three times the rate of white students—putting ETHS in a worse position than the national average. In a report entitled “Reimagining School Safety”, the Moran Center writes, “There have been at least 30 arrests made on ETHS property, although Black students at ETHS comprise approximately 25 percent of the population, they make up 77 percent of the arrests.”

As a publication, it is important that we address and reconcile with the historical origins of school in order to move forward. For ETHS to commit to genuine school safety, we must acknowledge its faults—and that begins by sharing personal narratives of students that have been disenfranchised. With that said, we would like to provide a brief overview of our stories prior to your reading of them.

Our first story (pg. 15) focuses on the ways in which ETHS’ classification of pepper spray as a weapon targets female-identifying students. Our second story looks at the racial profiling and implicit bias present in the schools’ disciplinary staff and how the ETHS Pilot ignores the nuances of race and gender when deciding what weapons to criminalize. (pg. 16) Our third story focuses on the classroom, where a Black student shares her experience of not feeling safe and humanized in AP classes (pg. 16). Our fourth and final story discusses the importance of intersectionality when navigating safety in school given the politically charged nature of power as it relates to slavery, patriarchy and sexual orientation (pg. 17).

As you read these stories, we hope that you feel inspired to discuss the history of education and use it to inform your actions and beliefs. Additionally, we want to acknowledge that we did not cover all facets of safety in schools in this issue at all. To gain a more comprehensive understanding, we encourage you to engage with resources like podcasts, books, websites and movies.

We hope that you find meaning in these pages and we appreciate your willingness to go through this journey with us.

by Nina Ferrer

How Student Union, administration are working towards school safety

By Nicole Yao Student Representative

Every Thursday afternoon I walk with anticipation into W311, full of ambitious thoughts and ideas, on my way to the weekly Student Union meeting. I enter the room, greeted by the warm welcomes of my peers, as the worn blue basket of candy is passed around through the classroom. Preparing to get our meeting started, I announce to the Student Union this week’s fun warm up ice-breaker question of the week: who would you choose from history to be your imaginary friend, and why?

Our Student Union is filled with students just like me who are passionate about making change in our school, uplifting Student Voices, and most importantly improving the student experience here at ETHS. As an all-volunteer student government with no elected positions, (aside from the position of the Student Representative to the ETHS School Board/President of the Student Union), W311 welcomes each student and their voices with open arms. Centered around student voice means not only transparency within the student body itself but also within students, staff and administration. Often, in these meetings, members share their personal experiences in whole group discussions, influencing other members and peers to offer solutions to their concerns and problems. In a recent meeting with the main theme being safety, individual expe-

riences and safety personnel related, my peers began to share their stories. One stood out in particular. A student trombonist was in a practice room, with the band director’s permission of course, on a Zoom call for their private trombone lesson, when a safety member began to knock profusely on the door and yell at them for being in the room without supervision. Over the course of the lesson, the safety officer continuously disrupted the student’s lesson ending with an intense scolding and the student needing to call the band director for assistance. Stories like these are shared everyday with the Student Union; thereafter, the specific concerns that students have, are brought to administration, fostering mutual trust and transparency between the student body and administrators.

The Student Voice Forum, previously known as the Witherbell Forum, is an annual event where students from all grades can talk to each other about troubles that they experience at school, but also directly to administration. With the help of many Student Union members and their hard work, we were able to develop table topic prompts for discussion about hot topics in the school building, like lunch, tardies and student safety. Something that Superintendent Dr. Marcus Campbell specifically acknowledged as a topic that he wanted to hear student feedback on was metal detectors for entry into the school’s building. In previous announcements and meetings, he has reiterated that metal detectors would

not be an ideal solution and is only a last resort type of plan. The purpose of this forum is to not only gain honest feedback from students, but to help them to feel like their individual voices are not only heard but are also being taken into account when the school makes decisions regarding student’s daily school lives.

In regular meetings with both the school’s principal and superintendent, connecting student voices directly with administrators who are willing to make student suggestions a reality, is a piece of cake. Frequently, throughout the first semester, the Student Union and I have received much feedback and concerns from the student body regarding safety at our school, in some form or another. Relevant incidents with students and the possession of weapons and forms of self defense brought up difficult and uncomfortable conversations assessing the need for more safety officers, security personnel, metal detectors, and most importantly, student well-being in the Evanston community. I work with Dr. Campbell and Dr. Kinzie to weed out potential solutions and thoroughly discuss the administration student’s wants and needs. The goals of ETHS administration and the Student Union is to work hand in hand, not only to acknowledge the discomfort current students feel in this community, but to create a plan that addresses these issues. Asking the difficult questions, like, “Is ETHS as an institution, doing its very best to ensure the safety of every student walking through these

halls?”

Last November, the previous student representative brought up in their student board report, which happens in the District 202 Board of Education meetings, student concerns about a color guard coach, hired by ETHS who was arrested in Indiana for child seduction. The student representative brought attention to the discomfort of Color Guard students who had made complaints about inappropriate touching and remarks by the colorguard coach. When the complaints were dismissed and brushed under the rug, students felt fearful for their own safety. At school, we currently no longer have any type of dress code, a direct result of the Student Union’s efforts to make ETHS a safe place for all students. To us, safety is not limited to only the physical rooms of the building, but also making all parts of the ETHS community a safe space for students of all identities and their voices. The Student Union and Student Representative’s role here is to create a platform for these students when it comes to making decisions on the administrative level. Throughout the rest of this school year, we will continue to advocate for our student body, making sure safety is a top priority for every individual.

The clock hits 4:30, and we wrap up our Union meeting, cleaning up candy wrappers and discussing our aspiring plans for the school all the way out the door. Excited for the next meeting coming in seven days.

Illustration

spray

By Sophia Sherman Opinion Editor

To make it home safely—that was Mayra Bazan Gonzalez’s goal.

As a swarm of orange and blue flocked to Lazier Field for Evanston’s homecoming football game, Bazan Gonzalez—concerned with little but the walk home that awaited her that night— prepared to join the crowd. September 30 was to be a night of fun; a break, even, from the realities of being a high school senior with college applications just around the corner.

So how was it that, before she had even entered the stadium, Bazan Gonzalez, an active community member in four AP classes, would now be leaving with a 10-day suspension?

It all started with a bag check.

“I got to the football game, and I was very excited. I was in head to toe orange and blue [paint], really [full of] school spirit. Then, I scanned in, and I obviously had a bag with me, so one of the safety officers yelled ‘bag,’ and they switched me on a detour to get my bag checked,” Bazan Gonzalez reflects. “[The safety officer] found my lanyard, and it had pepper spray on there, and she [said], ‘You can’t have this.’ I had [responded], ‘You can throw it away; you can confiscate it. I’m not emotionally attached to it. Do what you need to do’ Then, she was like, ‘No, this is serious. I need to get somebody.’”

A canister of mace, a tool for female self-defense against acts of assault—that’s what ultimately led to a punishment that put Bazan Gonzalez’s near-perfect academic record and dreams for higher education in jeopardy. After being isolated from her peers and promptly moved off the field, Bazan Gonzalez then met with a dean and self-identified “witness” to discuss next steps.

“Somebody pops their head in, and he’s like, ‘Do you guys need a witness?’ The dean had responded, ‘Yeah, we do,’ and so then I was like, ‘Oh, wow, I’m not just going to get yelled at. This is pretty serious now.’ [The dean] starts telling me, ‘You can’t have this, you’re not going to be able to go into the game [and] we need your mom to pick you up,’” Bazan elaborates. “I called my mom, I put the phone on speaker, and the dean goes ahead and starts speaking Spanish to my mom and says, ‘You need to pick up your daughter right now, because she’s not allowed into the game, she will not be allowed to go to the Homecoming dance and she will be suspended for 10 days.’ When she said that, I started falling apart. I just started crying. This was not something that we had had a conversation about prior to me calling my mom, so it was like, ‘Oh my god. What in the world?’ I’ve never been tardy to class, so this was from one extreme of never being in trouble to the other.”

Under Illinois state law, carrying pepper spray is prohibited for minors—putting young women in a precarious position where they must choose between feeling safe and unintentionally violating the law. That night, Bazan Gonzalez dealt with this exact dilemma, and, ultimately, Illinois legislation and ETHS policy failed to protect her.

In fact, Bazan Gonzalez, like most other students, was unaware that this policy even applies outside of the building.

“I was aware that, in the ETHS building, [pepper spray is not allowed]. Obviously, there’s posters in the bathrooms that say you can’t have pepper spray. Something that I learned later on is that if it’s anything ETHS related, any activity sponsored by ETHS, even if it’s off-campus, if you’re found with it, you could have the same consequences as if you were in the building with it, which I didn’t know. And that night, I did not see a poster or anything like that that said, ‘No pepper spray at the football stadium,’” Bazan Gonzalez elaborates.

Following her experience at the game, Bazan Gonzalez then received a call from the dean’s office and found out that not only would she receive a 10-day suspension, but it would come with social probation until December and a recommendation for expulsion—the maximum penalty considered for violating this weapon policy.

Although Bazan Ganzalez was then allowed to appeal to an administrator, the process was full of inequities and a lack of empathy for her situation. Upon hearing that the appeal would consist solely of Bazan Gonzalez, her mother, an inter-

preter for her mother and a room full of adults that were seemingly working against her, Bazan Gonzalez felt intimidated. She needed someone there to advocate for her, so she requested that a family friend with a history in school policy join them, but even this was rejected by the school.

“I was told, ‘If you have them present, [the school needs] to have somebody present. And then, this conversation won’t happen, or it won’t be as friendly as it could be.’ So, this seemed a little bit iffy and not as equitable as it probably should be,” Bazan Gonzalez notes. “I did not feel great about that meeting, coming out of it.

I was then given two options, which were, go to the Board of Education or take what [the administration] was giving me, which was to leave for the rest of this semester to go to an alternate school, which was described to me as a place people choose to go to, where it won’t just be people who have multiple suspensions. So when I heard this, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to be sent to Niles West or New Trier for the rest of the semester.’ But I looked up the school, [North Cook Young Adult Academy], and it was described on their homepage as a school for people with multiple suspensions or [people] running away from an expulsion. I felt a little bit lied to, I felt a little bit like, I had entrusted this person, and then I was just, again, slapped in the face.”

After the release of a petition with over 2,700 signatures on behalf of Bazan Gonzalez, it was only then that she received a new conse- quence of a four-day out- of-school suspension, three-day in-school suspension, and three-day restor- ative project. How- ever, the question still remains, why was she even punished in the first place for feeling the need to protect herself? Why does such an outdated, misogynistic policy still exist in a school as apparently ‘equita- ble’ as ETHS, and why would a state as apparently ‘progressive’ as Illinois contin- ue to place its fe- male citizens in an unsafe posi- tion? Other states, such as Washing- ton, allow minors to carry pepper spray with pa- rental consent, but Illinois leg- islators have blatantly failed to protect us in the same way.

“Just for having this on me to feel safe, I was given the maximum penalty at that moment. How did all of this happen within five minutes of somebody finding this in my bag?” Bazan Gonzalez asks.

When examining the policies of 12 prominent high schools across the North Shore, Evanston is one of three—the other two being Glenbrook South and Glenbrook North—to even classify pepper spray as a weapon in their student handbook. New Trier, Niles West, Niles North, Maine South, Maine East, Loyola, Lake Forest, Highland Park, Stevenson and Deerfield—these are all schools that ETHS considers itself to be above in terms of restorative action and equity but are also all schools that, unlike ETHS, recognize the sheer fact that owning pepper spray is not a disciplinary offense. It’s a means of temporarily preventing a reality that every woman has to live with.

Even CPS, a school district infamous for its challenges with safety and discipline, will not give a student an out-of-school suspension for merely carrying pepper spray. Instead, the school takes restorative actions, including a conference with parents, detention, or “skill-building” in-school suspension. ETHS has the most punitive, harsh policy when it comes to pepper spray when compared to aforementioned schools.

If Bazan Gonzalez didn’t have her academic record, if she didn’t have 2,700 people ready to defend her, she could have been expelled from ETHS. Yet, if Bazan Gonzalez had instead been a student at New Trier, she would have just entered the stadium, enjoyed her night and walked home—feeling that much safer to have a protective device on her.

“Sadly, I think that if I had been somebody who didn’t have my track record or had as many people that they were in contact with, who could advocate for them, I think that the situation would have ended very, very differently,” Bazan Gonzalez agrees.

As RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) explains, we live in a world where one sixth of women will be sexual assault victims in their lifetime, and those under 34 make up 69 percent of rape victims. Thus, pepper spray in its growing popularity has simply become an accessory to match a woman’s thrifted purse or Doc Martens that, unlike those fashionable accompaniments, also has the potential to save her from one of the most traumat- ic events imaginable.

However, Bazan Gon- zalez wasn’t the first female student at ETHS to be penal- ized for simply wanting to keep herself safe. In 2019, then-junior Lara- Nour Walton, who wrote an article on her experience for The Evanstonian, also had her pepper spray confiscated at a football game, but unlike Bazan Gonzalez, left the field with only a one-day, inschool suspension.

“It was about 20 minutes before the first football game of the sea- son, and I was eager to get to the bleachers. The security guard who was inspecting bags was taking a suspiciously long time with my backpack and ended up pulling out my pepper spray from the front pouch,” Walton, now a student at Columbia University, reflects. “He told me that my pepper spray was not allowed in the game, and I dismissed it, assuming that he would merely confiscate my aerosol. I was stupefied when, instead, I was apprehended for bringing the spray.”

But what made Bazan Gonzalez different? In such an identical situation, where both individuals were strong students academically, Walton was able to leave with a punishment that, while still punitive, didn’t have such a severe impact on her wellbeing. Although state law does pressure ETHS to punish its students for carrying mace, it is evident from Walton’s experience, as well as the policies of other public schools, that the severity of the punishment is entirely up to the administration. Similarly to Bazan Gonzalez, Walton was afraid for her safety when she entered the game with pepper spray, and, again, ETHS failed to take this into consideration when apprehending her.

“I had pepper spray because I was interning after school in Chicago, and my mother wanted me to have some sort of defense mechanism if

ever I were to encounter something dangerous. The administration never took this into account, despite the fact that women are at increased risk when walking alone,” Walton elaborates.

For Walton, the most concerning element of this issue—and much of the reasoning behind Bazan Gonzalez’s severe disciplinary action— stems from the actual classification of pepper spray. Under ETHS’ policy, pepper spray is classified as equivalent to bringing a gun, knife, or explosive device to school.

“The only reasoning behind why I had it was because I needed to walk home on a street where I had been cat-called, followed [and] harassed several times over the course of many years. And every time that I would be like, ‘Can I have restorative action? I’m open to it,’ I would be met with, ‘Well, what if you had a gun? What if you had a knife?’ It’s how the situation was treated, and that is why I initially got those 10 days [of in-school suspension],” Bazan Gonzalez explains the policy in regards to her experience. “Some administrators believe that it was black and white. It was you have a weapon, so you deserve the punishment for any of those weapons, which I don’t agree with, and a lot of other people that I spoke to do not agree with this. They are very different objects.”

Ultimately, a policy that classifies firearms in the same category as pepper spray is a policy that targets women. According to Zarc International, the largest pepper spray supplier for law enforcement, pepper spray was first invented in the 1960s when a young inventor sought out a way to keep his wife safe from muggings and assault. Meaning, pepper spray was invented and marketed for the purpose of protecting women using a non-lethal method. By equating a loaded gun to the same caliber as a device that protects women, ETHS is blatantly ignoring the nuances of being young and female in a society that promotes rape culture.

“It is not a discerning classification. Pepper spray is used for vastly different purposes than guns and should be treated as such. Once again, I still believe this policy fails to address sexual violence,” Walton agrees. “It has been difficult for me to reconcile this conviction with my anti-gun stance, and to an extent, I believe we should be addressing sexual violence, not from a self-defense perspective, but from a structural one. I have never been supportive of band aid solutions, and the pepper spray, admittedly, was one. Yet, we cannot criminalize women’s interim solutions to sexual violence until we take the necessary steps to systemically tackle this issue.”

Now, it’s up to ETHS, as well as the state of Illinois, to live up to its dedication to equity by changing the classification of pepper spray and allowing women to feel safer while walking down the street unprotected. Pepper spray isn’t a lethal weapon; it isn’t used by women to inflict harm on others, and carrying it certainly shouldn’t offset the entirety of a young person’s education.

For every girl that has been harmed on her walk home from school, laws and policies like this, that make it even harder for women to protect themselves, are partially at fault.

“In a perfect world, I would love for the school and the City of Evanston to come up with some sort of safety measurement, so students who feel like they’re unsafe walking home are able to feel safe walking home. Because I personally feel safe in this building, and that’s not the reason why I had the pepper spray. So I would want there to be some sort of carpooling system or crossing guards in a two block radius of the school, so that everybody is safe going home,” Bazan Gonzalez concludes. “And I would also love a [change in] classification of what they deem weapons, because I understand that pepper spray can cause a student who has asthma to have some serious complications, and that’s something that I didn’t know before. But I feel like if there’s a [new] classification, then that kind of argument of ‘Well, if you had a gun…’ is no longer viable, and there might be more of a restorative approach to it.”

Illustration by Ellie Lind

It all started with a bag check: Exploring the criminalization of pepper

A cry for community: Implicit bias in school dicipline

By Amira Grace Guest Writer

When I first decided I wanted to write this article, I was enraged and dumbfounded at the apathy of ETHS administration. Through a GroupMe chat for the ETHS Student Union, Mayra Bazan-Gonzalez, an ETHS student of color, reported being suspended from school, put on social probation and threatened with expulsion for bringing pepper spray into a school football game. Later that week, while discussing the event, I received a statement, among many other anecdotes, from a white senior who brought pepper spray into a football game this year, where it was thrown away by a safety officer, and the student spent the night enjoying the game. This, in tandem with the racially motivated stories I’d heard about safety in previous years, seemed to me that safety officers were targeting students of color. While there is no data to support whether this is a conscious choice or implicit bias, the latter is almost an unsolvable issue if that is in fact what is occurring. However, what I’ve noticed through interviews and interactions with the students and staff, is that the major issue is a lack of empathy and understanding by faculty when enforcing rules in the Pilot.

In regards to the 2022-2023 ETHS Pilot, punishment for bringing pepper spray

onto the campus ranges from “restorative action” and “extended detention” to “expulsion for up to two calendar years,” a policy that, if enforced correctly, makes sense considering the student’s intention when bringing pepper spray to school. However, it’s not being enforced that way.

There’s an appeal process students can go through when they feel they’ve been wrongly punished, but from the moment the incident occurs to the moment punishment is established, students should not be treated as criminals. A crime doesn’t make a criminal. Not wearing a seatbelt is a crime, but an unknowing child in the backseat of their parent’s car, discomforted by the texture of the seatbelt enough to take it off, is not a criminal. An unknowing student putting pepper spray in their bag in the case they’re attacked on their walk home in the night is not a criminal, and so, they shouldn’t be treated as such. So, whether or not there is an appeal process, the worries students have are not addressed or ameliorated in that process. Luckily, the outcome of Bazan-Gonzalez’s process was one she could understand and digest, but, as she outlines, “that was after many appeals… That was after a very traumatic process… That was after feeling like a criminal.”

After a discussion in a recent ETHS Student Union meeting, many of the unknowing and innocent students being rep-

rimanded and sent to the dean’s office are being sent by newer or unfamiliar officers. Whether it’s their lack of communication with students or stricter enforcement of rules after last year’s lockdown, new safety officers are cold and distant—maintaining stone faces, crossed arms and militant gazes. Students feel threatened, and I do, too. But I can’t entirely blame security officers. Administration plays a large role in how safety officers conduct themselves and the punishments students receive. Not only must safety officers follow orders and rules put in place by administration, but they conduct their behavior based off of that of administrators, so if administrators lack empathy in their interaction with students, so will safety officers.

That being said, this improper conduct is not applicable to all administrative figures. Like Superintendent Dr. Marcus Campbell says in reference to professional development, “[Assistant Superintendent and Principal] Dr. Kinzie and I… have lots of all staff meetings, where we go through training. We have lots of discussions on how to have a conversation about race. What are the unintended consequences about the disproportionality that we see in disciplining, [and that] we see in achievement.”

Many administrators are aware and sympathetic of the disproportionate enforcement of rules; however, this is not

the case for all administrators.

This is an issue, because, unlike Bazan-Gonzalez, many students don’t have excelling grades and extracurricular involvement to support themselves during an pepper spray appeal process, so the safest option, for them, may be to take the initial resolution to their case, leaving them with an unfairly enforced punishment, just in an attempt to feel secure.

As an ETHS senior, I can openly recognize poor student behavior. Students vape in the bathroom, vandalize ETHS property and break school rules daily. These are all undeniable realities. However, just as students are imperfect, so is faculty and the only way to prevent these traumatic punishments from occurring is through establishing an empathetic protocol for safety officers to follow when they find a student with pepper spray. The administration can change how it addresses individual cases. This is something students, teachers and safety officers can change by bringing this issue to the attention of administrators, especially those seemingly unaware of their colleagues’ destructive behavior.

AP classes are unwelcoming, isolating for students of color

By Simone Jacot-Bell Staff Writer

When most people think of safety, they think of the classic definition of it, which is “the condition of being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk, or injury.” While this definition is true for a lot of aspects in my life, safety within my schooling means something very different than this baseline definition. Safety within schools has been an extremely important and complex topic within the United States, as we are currently recovering from the traumatic repercussions of the over 35 school shootings that occurred in the 2021-22 school year. We usually think of safety in a more literal sense, such as being protected from a bullet to the chest or the threat of a natural disaster or fire. I can accredit ETHS for making me feel physically safe at school, with the constant drills, safety officers and procedures that take place. And while safety in the physical sense is extremely pivotal to student wellbeing, I don’t feel “safe” in the areas at school that I come across the most: my AP classes.

When thinking about the issue of diversity within classrooms, it can be hard to pinpoint who exactly to “blame” for the lack of it when there are several institutions in place that systematically keep Black and brown folks from taking rigorous classes. And even when these students gain access to these courses, there are few structures in place to ensure they feel welcomed or supported. I can’t say that I blame the school or my teacher or my peers—but I can say that being either one of the only (or the only) Black girls in my AP classes puts me in danger.

During my junior year, I took several AP classes, including AP English Language and Composition. My class was at least 90 percent white, with only a few other students of color and two other Black students. Within this environment, it was extremely difficult for me to take part in conversations about the Black ex-

perience or Black history, because those conversations often fell flat in a class where most students could not or would not relate. For example, when we began to read Frederick Douglass’ famous autobiography depicting his vicious treatment as a slave, The Narrative of a Life of a Slave, my English class became particularly dangerous. If you’ve read the book, you know that the subject matter is extremely heavy and traumatic, especially for Black students whose ancestors were in fact enslaved. While none of us can ever understand the experiences of people who were made into literal property, I related personally and deeply to the immeasurable pain that Douglass was describing within his life story. This pain intensified when I realized that there were white students in my class who related to this tragic autobiography the same way they did any other book. In fact, I remember a conver-

sation with one of my white peers about the reading:

“I didn’t do the reading because the book was just soooo boring! Did you?”

Yes, I did do the reading, and I didn’t find it boring, because it wasn’t just Douglass’ story, it was the story of my own ancestors and those of the other Black folks around me. That is what I wanted to say, but at that moment I simply had no words.

I felt isolated and unsafe. I looked around the room and realized that the history of my ancestors’ physical and psychological torture may not matter to anyone around me. To make matters worse, we were then given an assignment where we were instructed to write a letter to a slave owner, using Douglass’ work to explain why slavery was wrong. We were instructed to use formal letter language (i.e. Dear Mr. Brown) and rhetorical devices to empathize with slave owners to convince

them why bondage should be abolished. I was mortified. I knew that this would never have been allowed in other situations where people’s humanity is automatically recognized. For example, if a teacher would have asked students to use the Diary of Anne Frank to write a letter to Hitler about why the Holocaust was bad, it would be obvious why that assignment should never be allowed. Or if students were asked to write a letter to a rapist explaining why rape is bad, again, it would be obvious that this was an incredibly offensive request. Yet, somehow asking students, especially Black students, to write to someone who owned people the same way they owned furniture—someone who raped, mercilessly beat and emotionally terrorized men, women, and children, someone who ripped babies from their mothers arms like you take puppies from a litter to sell—somehow that doesn’t register as a problem. Thankfully, after complaining, our teacher retracted the assignment and apologized to the class, but it is not the first time this assignment was given, and it is an example of the kinds of things that make AP classes particularly dangerous for Black students.

The fact of the matter is that stories like these are far from uncommon for Black students in AP classes. AP courses, where the percentage of Black students often does not reflect the overall diversity within the school, creates danger for students of color. So when asked the burning question, ‘How do I define safety at ETHS?,’ I say that I don’t define it simply as a person such as a safety officer, or a metal detector, or a fire drill, or security at the front of the school. I define safety as feeling emotionally safe. Safety is a feeling of belonging, a feeling that you matter, and that the people and issues that are important to you are important to other people. I don’t worry about being physically in danger at my school. But I don’t feel safe here either.

by Yudora Petraitis

Editor’s note: The Evanstonian does not condone breaking any rule listed in the school’s Pilot

Illustration

Safety isn’t black and white.

Exploring the intersectionality of safety

By Aaliya Weheliye Photo Editor

What does safety mean to you? Do you picture men in blue with loaded guns trained to serve and protect? Is it a school surrounded by buzzing metal detectors that you have to walk through before first period? If some of these examples made you feel the opposite of secure—if they gave you sweaty plans or a lump in your throat—it could be because these situations have been enforced to elicit fear and anxiety. Safety is a polarizing concept for many because, historically, certain people’s safety has been put in jeopardy for others’. So let’s dive into the history of this word that is controversial and incredibly crucial in order to achieve equity.

When looking at how some feel safe in another person’s dangerous situation, we must acknowledge that often safety is an illusion. It’s ironic that there’s this idea that metal detectors will keep your child safe from all harm, yet male, Black students are more likely to be targeted in the process.Or that gender-neutral bathrooms are inappropriate or uncomfortable when transgender and non-binary students can feel completely out of place without one. Safety officers and SROs may help many ETHS parents and guardians sleep at night, but we need to examine how they do not punish equally. Senior Phoenix Anderson speaks about how she is treated differently as a Black woman by safety officers.

“I think that safety officers are taught that targeting Black students is okay… and it almost seems like the goal.”

No students should ever have to feel like a criminal when all they are trying to do is get an education. Schools are not only for learning, but for growing up, and they need to be a place where all students

feel security.

“It’s hard seeing people that look like us, target us, even if the rules come from above,” Anderson says.

The real root of the problem doesn’t start or end with safety officers, but rather with ETHS administrators who foster this hostile environment. Now that we have had a look at safety at ETHS, let’s take a little history lesson.

Safety is a word derived from Old French and Latin meaning being secure or unharmed. In medieval England, there was this idea of the “dangerous women.’’ When women are seen with emotions, especially ones that go against the status quo, it is often considered a threat. Histor-

ous. Thus, when thinking about safety, we must recognize that marginalized groups have to upset their oppressors in order to gain a sense of security or equality.

Another facet of safety is the need to control. In order for white slave owners to have felt protected on their plantations, they had overseers and slave patrol to carefully survail the enslaved people. Modern day police evolved from slave patrol in fact, which was made to prevent any slave uprisings or escapes. This idea of police keeping us safe is a very white-centric view. Again, when marginalized people threaten the white-cis-hetero patriarchy, it is an inherent threat. The over-policing of Black people is truly to

uality or gender identity, LGBTQ+ were seen as a danger. Straight people had some misguided notion that gay people want to force all children to follow in their foot steps and labeled them as perverts. We see this happening today, as many right-wing politicians villainize Queer people; simply existing threatens many people. Queer joy, similar to Black joy, is an act of resistance in such a bigoted world. While being seen as a threat to children, gay people were being killed by the goverment’s lack of HIV/AID’s prevention and care and have a insanely high suicide rate among youths. Even now with intense transphobia surrounding bathrooms and changing rooms at school, it is hard for trans students to feel a sense of safety. The first step to making people feel safe is to affirm who they are by creating welcoming and inclusive spaces inside the school.

ically, we can see men in power weaponizing women’s emotions against them by calling them crazy and irrational. This has led to unethical psychological treatments, including lobotomies and even murder during historical periods such as the Salem Witch Trails. In these trails, women were brutally murdered because of the misconception that psychosis or any mental illness was a sign of being posesed by the devil. Women having human emotions literally landed them dead. On the other hand, when men have stood up against unfair governmental policies or acted with intensity, it has been viewed as healthy or even necessary. Women standing up for suffrage, bodily autonomy and equality threatens authority and is seen as danger-

make white people feel safer. This illusion of safety leaves millions of people wrongfully incarcerated every year. This false notion of security makes it so when a white person calls the police on a Black person the police officer is already looking for a problem, rather than a solution when they arrive at the scene. This follows us to places of education, even at a liberal and seemingly diverse place like ETHS, where the administration disproportionately criminalizes Black and brown youth. We can see examples of threatening the norm very clearly with the pride movement. The word “queer,” while reclaimed, has it’s origins in hatefully labelling gay people as “odd” or “abnormal.” But beyond being ostracized for their sex-

After reading this, I want you to ask yourself one thing. Do my feelings of safety or security put others in danger? It’s hard to look beyond ourselves because, biologically, we all put our own safety first. But thinking about how to make your peers feel security, acceptance and understanding is vital for progress. Everyone should be able to walk down H-Hall without worrying about being unjustly targeted or to feel comfortable using the bathroom during school. ETHS has made efforts to improve student safety, but there is still a long way to go. Let’s work together to foster an inclusive, secure, and understanding school environment.

by Clara Gustafson

“I think that safety officers are taught that targeting Black students is ok… and it almost seems like the goal.”

- senior Phoenix Perlow-Anderson

Illustration

By Ahania Soni Executive Editor

As the crisp air swept past then-junior Marjie Erickson when she left her house to head to school in 2015, her mind wandered to all the excitement for the play she would take part in at school that day. On this very occasion, Erickson and others involved in theater made the executive decision to dress up. With her favorite dark red tights, a gray, long-sleeve wool dress and little boots, Erickson was ready for yet another day of school. Little did she know that hours later, as she made her way to gym class, she would be promptly stopped and dress coded. This event stemmed a need for change regarding the policy for Erickson, changing ETHS in the years to come.

Before the 2017-18 school year, the ETHS dress code focused on restricting clothes that were seen as “distracting” or “too much skin” and “revealing.” Clothing such as short skirts, all pants not past fingertip length, spaghetti-strapped tops, low-backed tops and anything showing cleavage would go against school policy if worn at the time.

Back when Marcus Campbell, our new superintendent, served as the principal, he agreed with many others on the need for a revised dress code.

“The language in the Student Handbook at that time was just so antiquated and outdated, it was a female-identified dress code, because all of the language was about what female girls wear, and nothing to do with boys,” Campbell says.

Humanities & psychology teacher Matt Walsh recalls how the restrictions within the dress code were directed towards clothing that most females at the school would wear and not men.

“It was almost all about what females wore; how long a skirt had to be, spaghetti straps on shoulders and a bunch of stuff about covering bodies. There may have been something about people pulling up their pants, but mostly, it was about patrolling female bodies and not male bodies,” Walsh states.

So, in the fall of 2015 on that fateful day when Erickson would end up dress-coded, she found the incident to be representative of the larger problem with the school’s dress code.

“I’m a bigger girl. I developed early, and I would be dress coded for wearing the same thing as a girl with a more athletic [build],” Erickson voices. “[This] actually happened my junior year. I was dress coded, and then two days later, my friend in my history class was wearing the exact same thing as me, except that I wore tights under and she hadn’t, and I got dress coded, and she did not.”

After one is dress coded, there are a few options to consider. No matter what, you have to change out of or fix the piece of clothing that you were coded for, some even would need to wear their gym uniform. If none of these options suited them, the only other choice was something known as dean’s wear, which physically said ‘Dean’s Wear’ on it.

“I have multiple friends who I can think of off the top of my head [that] would show up [for] the second half of the day wearing these big sweatpants; I don’t know where they got them but it was the ‘dean’s wear’, and it was a big mark of shame. It was about shaming young women for living and breathing,” Erickson explains.

Having graduated the year before the dress code policy was changed, Erickson now lives in Dubai but still to this day recalls the unfairness and fury that was brought about by the dress code when she was a student. Her main issue with the policy revolved around its enforcement, and its sexualization of young

women as if they were a distraction, a problem that needed fixing.

“The big problem was that Black girls were getting dress-coded left and right. Athletic-type white girls were not getting bothered at all in the same way. It was super gendered and very much ‘you have to cover up because you’re distracting’ and ‘your body is wrong,’” Erickson voices. “My whole thing was, ‘Aren’t we just kids trying to get an education?’”

Knowing these policies needed to be changed and were implemented for all the wrong reasons, Erickson dedicated an enormous amount of her time over the course of her junior and senior years to taking action on this issue.

“I was doing some surveys when I wanted to change the dress code senior year. And it was found that way, way, way more women of color, especially girls who developed early [were being targeted],” Erickson shares.

Within the surveys Erickson conducted, it was found that, according to Erickson, “48.9 percent of the 151 girls that were surveyed about being dress coded self-identified as having a ‘thick’ body type, or with a larger or curvier body type than average,” and when girls are taken out of class or stopped in the hallways, “3,570 minutes of class were missed in total, meaning an average of 43 minutes, an entire period, missed.” This further proved to Erickson that the disruption of learning isn’t being caused by those neglecting to follow the dress code but instead being made by staff members who take class time away from students who happened to be dressed in clothes that don’t follow the policy.

In addition to the surveys administered, Erickson also led a silent sit-in protest in the main lobby of ETHS during her senior year. It was held during the third period on a Friday and lasted about 25 minutes, according to Erickson. Just about 200 students attended; they sat silently protesting, as Erickson read a statement on the flaws within the policy, with hopes of getting the administration to take action. Everyone participating would not leave and return to class until someone with the power to change the policy agreed to speak with them.

While Erickson awaited the administration’s response, she tried to get her story out through the Evanstonian. Following the stu-

dent-led protest, Evanstonian writer Rachel Krumholz wrote an article based on the event and more specifically, Erickson’s leadership and work towards the issue. She summarized the several points Erickson spoke on, including her push for others to not stay quiet. She highlighted the importance of speaking up, whether it’s to administration, through organizing a protest or just having the difficult conversations that catalyze change.

Eight days after Krumholz’s article was published, the Evanstonian editorial board published another article that directly opposed the one before it, aimed at Erickson. The editorial “Organize meetings not protests” aimed to spread the message that rather than having protests at school, a better way to handle any situation is by organizing a meeting or speaking to the student representative about the issue at hand.

“No more random protests. No more disorganized complaints. We all have a voice; we just have to use the correct outlet,” the editorial board wrote.

After Erickson saw this article, and how it seemed to be directed at her recent protest, she decided to have a conversation with Rodney Lowe, the advisor of the Evanstonian at the time.

“Lowe said, ‘Oh, you can publish a response. I’ll publish your response.’ So, I wrote up a response about how the article was not [truthful] and in the interview [with Rachel, I discussed how I] went through the proper channels, how I met with the deans, how I met with the assistant principal, all this stuff,” Erickson clarified.

Despite Lowe having been clear about his trust in his journalists throughout the conversation, he did allow for a response from Erickson to be published in the Evanstonian. Erickson gave her retort to publish with clear instruction of only mechanical edits made to it. However, her request was not respected.

“They published it, referencing the wrong article. ... They edited it to say that it was about something else,” Erickson states.

Despite the roadblocks she faced through the school’s media outlet, she found success with getting through to

the administration, and eventually, Campbell agreed to speak with Erickson.

“I talked to Campbell and learned that the only way to change the dress code was through the school board,” Erickson explains.

“For the next couple of months, [I went] to the disciplinary committee meetings. There are four every year, and I went to three of them.”

This committee makes recommendations for changes to the handbook, which included the dress code, so by attending these meetings, Erickson was able to voice her opinion and listen in on important conversations. However, many adults told her that no change was going to be made and that all her work was pointless.

“How dare they? We’re minors without rights. We don’t have anything. We can’t do anything for ourselves. Then we go to school, and we’re sexualized for living and existing with bodies, and it just pissed me off,” Erickson exclaims.

Despite being a bit discouraged, Erickson decided she needed to take things into her own hands. She found a dress code from the Oregon Public Schools that was completely non-gendered and rather than what couldn’t be shown, it focused on what needed to be covered.

“I brought that dress code [to the disciplinary committee] and said, ‘Look, here’s a great model. We can model it after it. We can even just adopt the exact same one if we wanted to. Either way.’ Around college admissions time, probably in April, I had pretty much given up, because everyone was telling me that it wasn’t happening,” Erickson says. “In July, when they put out the new handbook, one of my friends emailed me and said, ‘Oh my God, you have to look at the new handbook. They did it. They actually changed the dress code.’”

Despite her fury, everything had worked out in her favor as well as all her peers and students for generations to come attending ETHS.

The modifications to the dress code, beginning in the 2017-2018 school year, allowed all sorts of clothing with restrictions only on violent or inappropriate language and images on clothes. The policy is completely different from how it once was, largely due to the help of Erickson and the many other students that spoke up and took part in making a change. Instead of the new policy being highly gendered, it now focuses on what needs to be covered up.

Teresa Houston, a teacher during the old dress code policy, teaches fashion design and has seen a shift in how student dress is thought about.

“Students have complete freedom to wear whatever they feel most comfortable in. And we’ve moved away from that narrative of ‘girls are distracting’. I have students show up in all sorts of things. And I think it’s good, because obviously, I advocate for fashion being part of our identity. So, students being able to show up feeling comfortable is really important.”

In agreement with Houston, Walsh sees it as a shift of power and control in favor of students.

“Everything’s calmer about it now and [I] should not have to be in charge of what the student wears. It just makes it so we don’t have to worry about it and [the students] get to be in charge of themselves.”

By Izzy Rudolph Assistant Feature Editor

Illustration by Livi Sumi

The exception, not the rule: safety at ETHS sporting events

By Christopher Vye Sports Editor

In 2022, large gatherings of any kind are targets. Schools, nightclubs, parades, movie theaters, grocery stores, shopping malls, places of worship and concert halls have all been the sites of some of America’s deadliest acts of domestic terrorism. High school sporting events are no exception to this rule, and that risk exists at ones held at ETHS.

Across the nation as a whole, these competitions don’t usually have the most expansive safety measures in place.

According to ESPN, “High school games, especially football and basketball, draw relatively large crowds of young people amid often lax security, making them hotspots for disputes…Safety measures such as metal detectors and coordinated security patrols are more the exception than the rule.”

As any Wildkit would know, ETHS is undoubtedly the exception. At larger athletic events like football and basketball games, bag checks, ticket scanners, swarms of safety staff and a police presence are the norm.

Athletic Director Chris Livatino outlines the ETHS athletic events most likely to warrant an increased number of safety staff and police.

“If we anticipate that there’s going to be a larger crowd, then we’ll assign safety staff. And if it’s even larger than that, the police will be involved,” says Livatino. “You’ll notice that at all of our football [and basketball] games, varsity and JV, we have a significant safety and police presence, because we can have up to 5,000 people at a football game and 2,000 at a basketball game.”

As intuition suggests, crowd size is the number one factor considered in determining what the safety response will look like for ETHS hosted athletic events. But when the number of attendees creeps up into the thousands, complications inevitably arise.

Associate Principal for Educational Services Keith Robinson discusses some of the

strategies employed by ETHS to keep these events safe, as well as some of the challenges that come along with such an endeavor.

“When you have thousands of people, it’s always a challenge,” says. “You have to have the most controlled environment as you possibly can. It’s best to control the environment at [indoor games]. We have a couple of points of entry, a few points of exit, so we

ence can transcend into, at best, feelings of intimidation, and at worst, outright fear.

Senior Alicia Frajman reflects on her experience during interactions with safety officers at sporting events.

“I do think ETHS could make sure their safety officers are being understanding and patient with spectators, because there have been misunderstandings in the past,” says Frajman. “I was once ball game and she was on crutches, but the safety cer at the gate

commodating her and was a little

relationships with students.”

These relationships are absolutely essential when it comes to creating an environment that is both fun and positive for attendees but also prioritizes their well-being and protection. There is an inherent deference students have for safety officers, but sometimes, this defer-

Frajman acknowledges that she has “personally never felt unsafe” as a spectator for the Wildkits, it is the role of safety to help create and maintain an environment that is not only safe, but welcoming. Even if a safety officer’s actions are not ill-intentioned, if situations are mishandled, the department

may be setback in its mission.

“I understand that the main goal is safety, and overall I appreciate the school’s effort,” Frajman added.

Senior and ETHS Kit Pit leader Kyla Wellington explains how the presence of safety staff has helped to make her feel at ease during her time in the student section.

“I have never felt unsafe, because there are [safety officers] present at all of the [bigger games], so having their presence has ensured comfortability,” says senior and ETHS KitPit leader Kyla Wellington.

While the procedures for larger sports events are clear, the school still has plans in place for sport contests that bring out fewer people.

“Smaller venues, like your typical non-basketball or football game, the supervision is the coach that’s there, the athletic director, [whoever is] making the rounds and just general safety,” says Livatino. “We could not afford to have a supervisor for every single contest that’s taken place.”

“There’s always room for pause and concern that [we] don’t have as many eyes at every single event as you could possibly have, but [we] also can’t afford the cost of that type of supervision,” Livatino added.

In 2022, having to keep an eye out for dangerous situations is just a fact of life, and that should not prevent anyone from making the decision to cheer on their fellow Wildkits from way up in the stands.

“There’s definitely been things that have occurred at different contests, and I’ve always felt like safety and the police department have done a good job of trying to quell whatever the issue is and not let it become larger,” says Livatino. “But there’s always room for improvement and growth.”

‘Killing opportunities’: tackling systemic inequity in sports

By Christopher Vye, Jacques Philippe Sports Editor, Staff Writer

The 2022 boys swim & dive senior day was meant to be a celebration. One of the last times the team’s senior members would race at ETHS’ famed Dobbie Burton Aquatic Center, the occasion was intended to commemorate all they had worked for over the past four years.

“We all [wanted] to swim hard for our seniors, make them proud, throw on a show for our crowd,” recounts senior and boys swim & dive captain Quintin Nguyen.

But despite all the festivities, enior Day 2022 would instead go on to be remembered for something very different. At the end of the meet, a member of the visiting team addressed Nguyen using a racial slur, an act that unsurprisingly coincided with an unprecedented rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans nationally.

Sadly, hate speech and harassment at sporting events is nothing new. For as long as there have been organized school and youth sports in the United States, systemic bias has been ingrained into the way they have been governed, played and organized. To this day, athletes of color continue to face hostilities in their pursuit to play, and that reality is perhaps no more apparent anywhere else than at ETHS.

Something that is more new, however, are standardized policies outlining how coaches and officials at high school sporting events are to respond when hate speech arises.

“Our conference created [a] hate speech protocol for sporting events back in 2016 because of the issues that Evanson dealt with repeatedly [regarding] the use of the n-word,” says Livatino. “Slowly, other conferences asked about it. They started adopting it and then the IHSA jumped on it after the George Floyd murder and all the other unrest that summer.”

Illinois is not the only state to have implemented such a measure in recent years. Following an incident at a boys soccer game in Vermont last fall, the Vermont Principals’ Association was prompted to begin requiring schools to read

aloud a statement against hate speech before athletic events. And in Massachusetts, a collaborative project between several state organizations, including the Office of the Attorney General, dedicated to combating hate in school sports was launched in April.

According to the IHSA Hate Speech and Harrassment Policy and Procedure, if an official witnesses hate speech or harassment, the alleged offender is supposed to receive an immediate ejection. In the event that a referee does not bear witness to the event, however, the procedure for determining next steps looks much different, and may even allow for the alleged offender to return to competition.

“Hate speech has different ways of rearing its ugly head, but if [a student-athlete has] experienced it, [they’re] supposed to tell [their] coach. The coach would then tell [an] official. The official is supposed to stop competition right then and talk to the coach and student-athlete from the opposing team. Then, [the student-athlete has] to address whether or not they said it. If they accept, then they’re suspended immediately and are out for the next contest. If they deny, it’s basically a warning. If it happens again and the official hears it, [they’re] gone.”

Even though an alleged offender can deny having said or done anything wrong, Livatino assures that choosing to deny an allegation is never a free pass.

“Some people might think “Oh, they’ll just lie,” and they might, but at the end of the day, it gets documented and it’s on file,” says Livatino. “I would get a report if one of our kids did that, and then I would talk to that student-athlete. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

“Every year, there’s some issue of hate speech, and I usually deal with two or three,” Livatino added.

Hate speech is not the only way structural racism within sports manifests itself. As varsity tennis player Sam Asaro, who is mixed race, explains, people of color regularly just aren’t represented on the court.

“I’m not oblivious to it,” Asaro says. “When we play neighboring schools in our conference, I would notice. I knew to expect majority white people,” says Asaro.

Tennis is far from the only sport that has this problem. Many high school sports perpetuate racial exclusion largely as a result of two main reasons: the necessity to begin playing them well before entering high school and the sheer cost of doing so.

“I could name 10 different sports where if you haven’t played before you come to ETHS, you have a zero percent chance of being an effective athlete,” says Livatino. “You might make a freshman team. You’re not going to go beyond that.”

Some of the most notable examples of these sports at Evanston include badminton, baseball, field hockey, golf, gymnastics, lacrosse, soccer, swimming, tennis, volleyball and water polo— nearly two-thirds of the sports offered by the school. And while each one has its own unique set of challenges as it relates to systemic bias, the need to have experience with them as early as elementary school frequently eliminates the chance they end up being diverse in high school.

“The youth sports system and structure that’s in place right now is killing the opportunity for kids of color to get involved in sports, ever,” says Livatino.

According to the Aspen Institute, families spend an average of $883 per season for their child to play a sport. But considering the kind of athletic prowess it takes to make a varsity team at ETHS, this number is likely a stark underestimate. For some sports, individual pieces of equipment nearly meet or even exceed this number. Technical swimsuits can retail for over $600, tennis racquets may cost $250, baseball bats $500 and golf clubs possibly over $1000— and that’s just for single pieces of equipment. Once travel, team fees, uniform costs and other expenses are added in, families may be looking at sticker prices exceeding five figures. Often,

this means families of color end up priced out of youth and club sports.

Livatino elaborates on how club sports provide advantages to those with the resources to afford them.

“You might have the opportunity to play Haven volleyball [in sixth grade], and everybody’s kind of [on a level playing field], and those teams look relatively diverse,” says Livatino. “And then once that Haven volleyball season ends, everybody who can afford club goes off and plays club. Now, they’re getting better every single week for months at a time. And the next year, when they try out, it’s not the same story. By the time we get to high school, you’ve got three years on everybody else.”

Initiatives to counteract these inequities have sprung up across Evanston youth sports in recent years. For example, there’s Tennis Evolution Evanston, of which Asaro volunteers her time, and soccer club JaHbat FC, whose name is an acronym that stands for Jamaica, Americas, Haiti, Belize, Asia/Africa and Trinidad, a nod to the cultural backgrounds of the clubs founding members. On top of that, there are also a slew of student-led organizations dedicated to increasing diversity in Evanston sports. For instance, there’s Volley4Change, which was started by seniors Meg Houseworth and Margaret Adams as well as Niles West senior Cherie Animashaun, and Diversify Golf, founded by sophomore Olivia Ohlson.

As Livatino shares, these are exactly the sort of programs needed to ensure that many predominantly white sports become more representative of the ETHS student body as a whole. And in turn, that is also what it will take to ensure that hate speech at sporting events, similar to what Nguyen experienced, becomes a thing of the past as well.

“What it takes to change all this is youth programs that reach out systematically to bring in people from [all] races [rather] than just trying to serve whichever community can pay the fees,” says Livatino.

Photo by Maya Valentine

Sports: Athletes’ first exposure to discipline

By Jessica Sehgal, Olivia Ohlson Executive Editor, Staff Writer

If you’re on time, you’re late. Don’t expect to show up out of attire, or you’ll be asked to leave. If you miss a day, it’ll come at a price.

These three standards apply to nearly any professional space you step into. From the workplace to any educational institution to flat out walking down the street, we live in a society governed by rules, and by the time students reach their adult life, they’re expected to have most of them figured out. However, for many students, their first exposure to a strict culture of rule-following stems from an unexpected source: sports.

“I think the first time I experienced strict discipline was when I got to high school [volleyball],” shares junior volleyball player Annika Stewart. “There was an expectation that you were on time, and if not, you were running or everyone else [on the team] was running, so it really made everyone get there on time.”

Punctuality is just one of the more basic concepts many coaches hope to instill into their athletes. Among these are the messages that an athlete should come ready with the proper attire, maintain an appropriate attitude and sustain an exemplary attendance, and if an athlete steps out of line, a consequence typically follows.

“It forced me to be more of a rule-follower … It truly got me into a routine,

and I couldn’t see my life without it in that way, and I couldn’t see myself without following certain [rules] I follow right now,” Stewart continues.

Beyond expectations within the practice setting, ETHS athletics expect integrity that is found throughout all dimensions of their livelihood. Coaches look to their athletes to represent their sport nobly, even when they leave practice, and this begins with academics. Each week, the school sends a grade report to coaches for each athlete during the season, and if a student is earning less than a C- in two or more classes, they are placed on academic study table, meaning the student must attend three support sessions offered by the school within a week or else they will be ineligible the following week. Consequently, athletes have placed more focus and value in their academics, with ETHS student athletes averaging a higher grade point average than students who are not involved in sports.

“I've seen great turnarounds from players who maybe didn't take school seriously freshman year and had to learn the hard way in terms of understanding our academic standards here at ETHS. You have to be a student first, an athlete second,” explains varsity football head coach and Assistant Athletic Director Mike Burzawa.

When put into consideration, it makes sense. Sports are founded on the basis of abiding by rules, and in order to produce

an effective and reliable team, it’s essential for many coaches that their athletes have clear expectations that they’re meeting everyday. But teenagers, by nature, are more likely to be impulsive and rebellious than adults who are expected to follow the same set of rules for nearly any line of work, so how are coaches able to instill this disciplined mindset into their athletes? For many teams, coaches effectively enforce rules by utilizing one of the driving forces that shapes human decisions: the concern with how others will perceive you.

“For me, a lot of [my discipline] comes from competitiveness with the other guys or the way the other guys view me,” senior lacrosse player Charlie Plante explains. “You want to be someone who can be relied on.”

When coaches set clear expectations for their players, their players begin to expect clear expectations from each other, and that is the key to making sports such a unique environment in its ability to not only initiate discipline within their players but also sustain those learned principles.

“Everything starts with structure, accountability and discipline. First and foremost, in any athletic program, [with] any team, you just have to have great discipline,” Burzawa says. “In the game of football, it really comes down to senior leaders emerging as leaders and setting the tone of everybody being on time [and] everybody being accountable and pre -

pared for practice. You go from freshman year, when [athletes] can’t remember their spikes or, potentially, how to get dressed in their football equipment. Then, as they go through the program, [our coaches] become less patient with those things, and [we] expect those to be taken care of on a daily basis.”

Once students begin to hold each other accountable, it signals that they’ve developed into a headspace of holding themselves accountable, which is a true testament to impactful coaching that extends far beyond the realm of athletics and into the way students are able to lead their lives.

“You learn a lot about discipline through sports. There’s two types of discipline, a lot of the times it’s the authoritarian discipline that you can experience from your coach, which I think is a lot of times what kids first experience. ‘Coach tells me to do this, I gotta do this, I gotta follow the rules,’” says Athletic Director Chris Livatino. “As they want to get better and better, they learn that the most important discipline is self discipline—that’s holding yourself accountable and setting your own standards, and I think sports is a great way to evolve a kid from just being a rule follower to being a rule creator for themselves.”

Illustration by Franny Brady