Feeling fully me What I’m taking with me from the Student Diversity Leadership Conference

STORY BY SAMI K. ’23

Dispatches From Sdlc

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DAY ONE ]

Zara M. ’25

8:15 a.m.

Opening ceremonies

Nueva students and teachers sat together in the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center. We listened to civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen talk about her experience proposing and drafting the Sexual Assault Survivor’s Rights Act, and she shared with us her sexual assault story— how she overcame what happened to her and what it was like working to find her assailant. Nguyen’s talk was so moving. It was especially inspirational to hear how she put her career on the line to fight for what she believed in.

10:45 a.m.

“Silent Movement”

Dr. Rodney Glasgow, a DEI trainer and facilitator, read prompts regarding identity (e.g. “if you identify as Black or African-American, please stand up if you are able.”). It was interesting to see the diversity among us, and to stand alongside people with a shared identity was very powerful for me.

AT SDLC, I DISCOVERED a sense of belonging with strangers whom I would never have talked to otherwise. I have wanted to go to SDLC ever since I was in the ninth grade, when I created the first multiracial space for my middle school’s ALANA (African American, Latino, Native American, and Asian American) space. I saw the immediate impact the space had on the other students who attended. What really struck me was that one of my peers wrote about their experience of attending this group and how the existence of the mixed space made them reconsider their own identity.

1:15 p.m.

Susan B. Anthony family group

We discussed two or three core cultural identifiers including race, socioeconomic status, and ability.

3:30 p.m.

Snack

I had lemonade, chips, and chocolate. This was a great time for me to get to know my home group, a smaller subset of the family group.

3:45 p.m.

We did guided journaling about the pandemic and how we have changed over the years. We also did an “identity molecule,” where we connected different aspects of our identities. For me, I connected race with gender, since being a woman of color has shaped the way I have been perceived by the world.

7:30 p.m.

Affinity groups

I went to the South Asian Affinity Group. There were more than 60 people in the group! The facilitators gave us prompts—such as completing the sentence “Being South Asian to me means…” It was so amazing to talk about our shared love for desi food, music, and culture.

This year, as a senior, I applied to attend SDLC because I have felt disconnected from my mixed identity—feeling more half and half than whole, racially—and I wanted to gain the tools to facilitate productive discussions that include solutions instead of simply reflections. In joining this multicultural space and hearing others stories, I felt full in my mixedness.

Over the course of two 16-hour days at SDLC, I learned how to talk about eight core cultural identifiers—race, sexuality, gender, age, ability, socio-economic status, religion, and family structure— and how to create space to connect across uncommon territory.

The SDLC and POCC conferences were held in San Antonio, TX. Students, faculty, and staff enjoyed strolling along the San Antonio River Walk, which winds and loops under bridges and connects restaurants, historic sites, and tourist attractions. Pearl Y-L. ’26 said, “It was so beautiful, especially lit up for the holidays.”

To help create this connection, the conference offered affinity spaces for students who identified as Black, East Asian, LGBTQ+, Latinx, Jewish, multiracial, and transracially adopted, as well as a white awareness space. I joined the multiracial affinity group. On the first day we did an activity in which we would all be connected through our (mostly) different racial identities. I said, “On one hand I’m Chinese and on the other I’m white.”

Then someone who shared part of my identity joined the circle and spoke about their identity, starting with the identifier we had in common. It was very cool to see how identities either ran in a line or reversed orders, and to hear the “Oohs” and “Ahhs” that swirled around the room when someone said something distinct.

In addition to affinity spaces, SDLC also assigned students to family groups, which offered us another opportunity to issues around diversity. Family groups consisted of roughly 50 students and two facilitators and were named after influential women ranging from activists to pop culture icons (I was in the Serena Williams group). Each student at SDLC was separated from their school contingent in order to meet new people across the country. Family groups were also broken into smaller randomly selected home groups of five to 10 people.

Although we sat on the carpet in our family groups for the majority of our time, there were plenty of activities to stretch our legs and meet people from other family groups. There was a smaller version of fishbowl, with four people in the middle discussing a given prompt and everyone else observing, and rapid-fire questions between two concentric circles of people, with one circle rotating every three minutes to discuss a given prompt.

Hearing a diversity of perspectives was an informative experience for me, and I left both these activities and the conference having felt seen, without a need to explain myself or make excuses for one side of myself. I was fully me, in my mixedness, without compromises. [N]

[ DAY TWO ]

Sami K. ’23

1:30 p.m.

Keynote Speaker #2

Katherine Dihn, head of school at Marin Country Day School spoke about her immigration process to the U.S. and migration across the U.S. It was clear that she developed a lot of resilience through this experience.

Pearl Y. L. ’26

3:15 p.m.

Affinity groups

In the AAPI affinity group, we did a spectrum activity similar to one we did in our family groups. Then we discussed many topics, including Asian beauty standards, social justice, and feeling “not Asian enough.” The conversation that stuck with me the most was a candid, shocking discussion of Asian fetishization.

5:15 p.m

Dinner (see photo opposite)

I ate barbecue chicken and salad with a lemon bar for dessert. I sat with a student from Houston and another from Fort Worth, TX, and they both were similarly confused about the lack of flavor from the barbecue.

[ DAY THREE ]

Sami K. ’23

8 a.m.

Closing ceremony

An activity that stuck with me was “May Peace be with You,” in which we greeted as many people as possible to pass our energy to them with a fist bump, a hand shake, or a hug.

11:15

Final closing ceremony with Mariana Atencio

We finished the conference together with the attendees from PoCC—all 8,000+. In this final session, we heard from Atencio, the first Latina journalist correspondent on MSNBC and NBC News, about tackling prejudice head on. She presented three tools: 1) “Shake off and recenter with your power,” 2) “Look up! Speak up! Pull up!” and 3) “Creation, outlook, network, time, ritual, order, love (C.O.N.T.R.O.L.).” I felt so free after listening to her speech, and I hope to follow her advice in the future to feel grounded in myself.

Pearl Y. L. ’26

Although the conference attendees started as strangers, we ended closer than I feel with many of my classmates. When our time was up, many of my peers shed tears over our beautiful group. In the end, I felt as if I was being forced away from my family.