A Review of the Hastings Town Hall Meetings

By Avanthi Chen (Contributing Writer) and Kaylee Oppenheimer (Managing Editor)

Last week the Hastings community partook in two Town Hall meetings providing students and Hastings Alumni a space to share their experiences with racial discourse and representation in the Hastings school district.

Led by Mr. Abrams and Ms. Mateo-Toledo, many students found these Town Hall meetings illuminating and a safe space to talk about their experiences, while others expressed that there is much more that needs to be accomplished.

During the town hall, one graduating senior, T’nyas Catalan, discussed the lack of curriculum and representation for students of color, and stressed the need for more faculty of color. Additionally, she spoke of the need to have classes that focus on Afrian history, Asian history--all of history--instead of just centering around European-American history. She continued by saying that white students need to understand the experience of students of color and that white students often aren’t aware of their own privilege.

T’ynas said of the need to have more faculty of color that “everybody keeps saying ‘no’ and keeps trying to push it and hush it up, but it’s not going to get hushed up.”

Ben Halperin came to the meeting specifically because he wanted to express his concerns with the school district being silent for so long on the murder of George Floyd, although he noted that this delay didn’t surprise him. He said of the email sent from the school district: “I just felt the school didn’t do enough and with the entire country is focused on one thing, and our school taking so long to comment on it, and the statement they made I thought was pretty weak. I didn’t appreciate some of the things they said in it, I think they could’ve have gone one step further to acknowledge that systemic racism does exist in throughout all of our country’s institutions, whether it be schools, police, in the court system, in housing, I think that would have been a big step to just like recognize that, and they didn’t do that...I also would have appreciated if they say that they stand with the protests, or Black Lives Matter.”

Anna Aubry, an alum of Hastings, spoke on a related issue about a lack of curriculum in Hastings and explained that in some ways she feels failed by the Hastings School District because when entering college she was unprepared for racial discourse and lacked the tools for these kind of conversations she found herself feeling unprepared for college in this way. She said that a lot of issues regarding race and gender are not addressed or talked about in required, core classrooms. She pushed for making Courageous Conversations mandatory and a year long class, and called for regularly scheduled speakers to speak on these topics of race.

Graduating senior Avanthi Chen talked about the importance of these “courageous conversations” asking the school curriculum and teachers to acknowledge the lived experiences of POC as fact and not political opinion. “This is not a political issue,” she said, continuing “teachers should be careful when talking about political issues, but some topics are treated as political opinions rather than fact, when things really are simply facts. When facts are taught as opinions, it invalidates the lived experiences of people of color. Teachers have a responsibility to say something.”

Kristina Catalan brought up an important point when discussing our school’s lack of relationships with any historically black colleges or universities (or HBCUs), telling me in an interview, “if we do not have counselors gaining relationships with HBCUs, then they won’t know about our school and won't feel a sense of urgency to come talk to our schools.” Although aware of the fact that children of color represent a small percentage of the student body here at Hastings, she pointed out how it was still wrong to deprive those few students, and anyone regardless of their race, of the unique opportunities at HBCUs.

Alex Weitzman, a graduating senior, said, “People mentioned that doing an assembly would be really helpful, and I agree with that, but I think taking it a step further and making this a regular thing--whether it be through a class or every few weeks having a group forum, just making sure that this is something that we’re constantly addressing and making sure that everyone is a part of the conversation.”

He had taken the elective Facing Ourselves in his sophomore year and said that it profoundly changed the way he thought about issues concerning race, gender, and inclusion. He said, “There was a lot of information that I didn’t know. I really didn’t know a lot of history of people of color, I didn’t know some of the stereotypes--how hurtful they can be, and where they might have come from, and why that makes it even more destructive that they’re used in our society. What I found in Facing Ourselves was that education and learning about this stuff was one of the most powerful tools in helping our school advance to a place that we want to be.”

Yakira Sameth, a graduating senior, spoke on the fact that active change needs to happen rather than just speaking of change. Aya Hinawi, a rising junior who identifies as Muslim, said that “religious diversity is not something that we experience here” and that “if you think about something like Ramadan, which is a month of fasting for Muslims, which I actually do observe Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr, which is the holiday that comes after that, like I know we don’t have a lot of Muslims in the school, so it doesn’t make sense to really cater to that, but I’ve never once even heard it brought up in a class.”

Aya wanted to expand Hastings’s curriculum, reaching for a more whole and diverse curriculum: “What’s especially important and what’s being talked a lot about now is making courses like African-American studies mandatory and I think that’s really important. They should focus on that, most definitely, and not only African-American history, other history, too, like Arabic history.”

She continued, “Never once have I seen an adult in the school building wearing a hijab, for example. There’s nobody that I can relate to or talk to them about, and it’s something that has to change. There must be more representation for all cultures.”

In listening to all of these students and alums, Mr. Adipietro decided that we “need to put ourselves in an uncomfortable place,” and that we need to have difficult conversations with students and teachers. Ms. Mateo-Toledo called for making racial literacy and history more interwoven throughout the year. Mr. Adipietro added that the Hastings School District needs to balance state-required content and infusing racial literacy and history.

T’ynas concluded, “I think the Town Hall meetings are a step because we are talking about things, but once I feel like I see change and once I know that once my little brother Royal comes to the high school, who’s going to be in eighth grade next year—so that gives the school about two years to figure out how to put together a curriculum or hire an African-American teacher—once I see when what happens for him when he joins the high school, that’s how I’ll know whether the Town Hall meetings actually worked. We’re basically talking and talking and talking, but I won’t believe anything is happening until I see a change, until I feel like that it was all worth it—all the mornings, getting up early for the Diversity Committee, waking up at 6:30am to talk and figure things out—then, I’ll know it was all worth it.”