ALES Assembly/Sit-In

The article below references a video and proposal put forth by Exeter’s Afro-Latino Exonian Society (ALES). To watch the video and read the proposal, visit our website at...theexonian.com/2017/06/04/ales-video/ The Afro-Latino Exonian Society (ALES), along with other Exonians, staged a sit-in in Principal Lisa MacFarlane’s office Thursday in the wake of a last minute all-school assembly prompted by the faculty’s viewing of an ALES film that shared first-hand accounts of racism at PEA. With the student body gathered in the assembly hall, faculty members filled the stage and stood behind MacFarlane as she gave her remarks. She delivered a brief speech urging the community to care for one another and expressing regret for past misdeeds that she did not name, referencing neither ALES nor its video. She then introduced Reverend Heidi Heath, who led those gathered in the assembly hall in a short prayer that emphasized repentance. Some faculty on stage wept, and others walked off in apparent anger or protest. After the prayer, students were dismissed for summer vacation. Members of ALES and other students remained seated in the fronts rows of the assembly hall before staging the sit-in.Senior and ALES member Kelvin Green II, who was a vocal presence at the sit-in, described the assembly as a missed opportunity. “We called an all school meeting, great first step. We reorganized the schedule for the day, great way to disrupt the schedule so you can get the conversation going,” he said. “However, Principal MacFarlane did not capitalize on that moment, to truly make some change.”Many felt that the assembly should have acknowledged the contents of the video and honored ALES members’ requests for immediate action, rather than prolonged conversations. “Having spent two years shaping a strategic plan, the culmination of which was a report in May 2015 that explicitly included the requests ALES made to our committee, and having heard that those requests were shelved [and] ignored, I was frustrated for our kids who feel as though they are yelling into a jet engine,” English Instructor Christina Breen said.ALES members met with Principal Lisa MacFarlane in February to present a proposal they had written outlining concrete actions for the Academy to take in pursuit of full inclusion of Exeter’s black and Latinx students. They called for increased hiring and retention of faculty of color, required cultural competency training for faculty members, the development of a required ethnic studies course, the addition of racial sensitivity units into student health classes and greater funding for the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs, among other things. At the meeting, ALES also shared several anonymously submitted narratives of racism and prejudiice that students had faced in their time at the Academy.According to upper and ALES cohead Athena Stenor, MacFarlane seemed receptive to the proposal, and said she would commit to ALES’ first big goal: to implement mandatory cultural competency training for the faculty. Earlier this year, administrators and faculty began working on a strategic plan that includes inter-cultural competency, and communicated this to the faculty in late May, but ALES did not hear back about the proposal. Stenor described the administration's history of a similar lack of communication. In the spring of 2015, ALES brought a proposal seeking equity and inclusion to the administration but was denied a faculty meeting. As former Principal Tom Hassan prepared to leave the Exeter community, he promised to pass on the proposal to the incoming administration. However, over a year and a half later, MacFarlane informed ALES that she had never been given the statement. “That’s one example of a failure,” Stenor said, “this seeming lack of prioritization of these issues even though they affect about 43 percent of this campus.”English Instructor Mercedes Carbonell, who has worked at the Academy since 1993, attributed such failures to the Academy’s  “constant, continual and tragic allegiance to fear,” and to their unwillingness to risk discomfort as a community when speaking about race. “The greatest failure I see is that of accountability and lack of vision,” she said. “Until there is a clear vision that we must be an Anti-Racist culture, our community will continue to be divided. Until there is a clear vision from our leaders that we are actively working to end White Supremacy, we will continue to feel the fractures among us, continue to experience the pain, continue to place our students of color in harm's way.”In an effort to prompt the school to act on its proposal against institutional racism, ALES members chose four out of the 30 narratives they had submitted, and enlisted random members to read aloud these narratives. Upper Ori Evans created a video featuring these recitations. Members of ALES posted it on Facebook on May 25, and on Friday, May 26, ALES met again with MacFarlane to discuss its specific concerns regarding the hiring and retention of faculty of color. On Thursday, June 1— the last day of school— the entire faculty gathered in the morning to discuss the issue of faculty diversity and to watch and respond to the video. After much discussion, the faculty voted (verbally) to hold an impromptu all-school assembly in order to acknowledge the issue and their commitment to addressing it. Despite the haste that this decision entailed, many felt it was important to broach the issue before breaking for the summer. “There emerged an agreement among most faculty members that it was important to respond before the summer—that to remain silent in the face of what we had seen sent a stronger if inadvertent message that we don’t care or don’t see this as a priority,” History Instructor Molly MacKean said. Carbonell described the intention of the faculty members in their decision to hold an assembly. “When some passionate voices spoke out about the desire for the entire community to gather in the morning, to acknowledge what ALES had offered, to acknowledge that the film is out there and we know many have already seen it, to acknowledge that we may not have all of the answers in place but we know our negligence and the ways in which we have not attended to the racial injustice that has pervaded our campus for years, we voted to gather as a community,” she said. Critics of the assembly felt that MacFarlane had said sorry for a problem that she did not name. “Apologies were offered, but they sounded generic,” History Instructor Michael Golay said. “It wasn't evident to me what the administration was apologizing for.”Green emphasized the insubstantiality of conciliatory sentiments, and the importance of action. “To students of color, apologies don’t mean that much, because someone can be sorry, but I’ve been through an experience that has been dehumanizing, then sorry doesn’t really carry any weight, only action does,” he said.Several community members wished that the administration had shared the video. “It made it look like we were afraid of what it said, and while I think we should be affected by what the video reveals, we cannot be afraid to talk about it, to own it,” MacKean said. Many also felt that MacFarlane’s speech was too vague—she failed to explicitly mention racism, people of color or ALES’ video. “Hardly any context was provided, and only the barest indication of why the last-minute assembly had been called,” Golay said. “I would imagine a lot of students walked out of the assembly confused and wondering what had just happened and why.” While English Instructor Todd Hearon commended the spirit behind the assembly, he too wished that it had been more direct. “I think the terms could have been laid out more clearly, namely, that we are talking about racism and how it has affected members of our community,” he said. “And, as a coda, that this assembly was being held in response to a film by ALES presented that morning to the faculty that had so unhoused us, that we had moved as a majority, to cancel classes and hold an all school assembly. That could have been articulated more clearly.”Senior Nolan Peacock agreed, saying, “They could have at least acknowledged the existence of these issues, or at the very least spoke the phrases ‘racism’ or ‘people of color,’  rather than just tiptoeing around them, speaking in empty platitudes and patting themselves on the back with a prayer and a tearful gathering of teachers.”Many others also viewed MacFarlane’s remarks as an attempt to appease the faculty’s own sense of guilt. “[The apology] was kind of shallow, and I think her message was just to assuage white guilt, to make the faculty feel like they heard these stories, and they’re sorry, and you know, remove their discomfort,” Green said. “It's great that the faculty can assuage their white guilt through this assembly, but until something is actually done, it doesn't mean anything.”In an email to The Exonian, MacFarlane acknowledged the assembly’s shortcomings. “The assembly was done too quickly, and without enough preparation,” she said. “The focus should have been on the students and their work, their experience.” She attributed these missteps to an emotional reaction to the video. “The film moved everyone, and sometimes, when people are deeply moved, their judgment is not as clear as it could be,” she said. “We learned that, I learned that.” “In terms of Afro-Latinx students, I don’t think it served any of us,” upper and ALES member Charlotte Polk said of the assembly. “It [was] just a failure to act on the administration’s part, a failure to actually do anything, because we do a lot of discussing, but there hasn’t been a whole lot of action.”In the aftermath of the assembly and in response to its general sense of frustration and hurt, ALES organized a sit-in in MacFarlane’s office. For over two hours, the students voiced their dissatisfaction with the handling of the assembly, and their subsequent requests to the administration. They urged MacFarlane to send an email of apology acknowledging her lack of judgement at the assembly to the community immediately. They asked her to send the video out, to post it on Exeter’s school website and to commit to communicating with the community throughout the summer about Exeter’s plans to work towards a more inclusive environment for its students and faculty of color. “There was a lot of tension but there was also a lot of rawness and there was a lot of earnesty on the part of the students. I feel like the students are very aware of how they presented themselves and I don’t think anyone really wanted to burn any bridges with the faculty,” Stenor said, of the sit-in. “We were all just trying to make them understand what we wanted and to really try to convey the wrongness of what had happened at assembly and what hasn’t been happening for decades at this point.”She described the sentiments that drove the sit-in. “I think the dominant feelings were frustration, anger, pain, hurt but also a lot of resolve,” she said. “Usually, when we talk about these things, there’s usually that one person who’s like, ‘is this allowed? What about this? Could we get our acceptances rescinded?’ There was none of that. We were very fearless in that moment and apologized later but we had things we needed to get off our chests.”MacFarlane sent out an email of apology to the community at 11:08 PM on Thursday night. “Our goal in that assembly was to let our students know that the faculty had heard them, and is committed to taking action,” she said. “However, in our haste, we did not craft a thoughtful response. I did not provide the essential context about the film, its power, or the faculty meeting and the students’ compelling introductory remarks. Because of that, many of our students left the assembly confused; others left angry; others hurt.”“Over the summer, we are going to complete and add to the plans already underway,” she promised. “We will write to you about those plans, as we prepare for action when the school year begins.  We will hold ourselves accountable.”