An Open letter To Penn-Harris-Madison School corporation

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Open Letter

Demands And Timeline

Forms and statements

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Incidents of Racism at Penn

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Open Letter

If you would like to sign on to the statement, please complete this form. For a list of all the signatories, click here. We recognize that we do not represent all students and demographics at PHM and if you have a story you would like to share, please fill out this form here.

To The Penn-Harris-Madison School District:

As a result of recent events, many in our nation have been reflecting on the systemic racism that is persistent through every facet of our lives, including our education system. Similarly, many of us have noticed that the Penn-Harris-Madison School District has remained silent on this issue. As a result of working with the administration of Penn High School, going to the district’s school board meetings, and attending PHM schools for an extended period of time, past Kingsmen Court (student government) executive members and other alumni have noticed a troubling pattern in our school district.

First and foremost, Penn-Harris-Madison prides itself on its supposed diversity but repeatedly fails to support their students of color. A particular incident that comes to mind was during 2018, when students from Chinese Club and Torah Club hung up posters to promote their activities. The posters were vandalized with racial slurs and hateful symbols, but the school never publicly addressed the incident. To this day, we do not know if the perpetrators were punished and neither do the students directly affected by this incident. Furthermore, time and time again, students have been subjected to racist rhetoric by the staff and nothing has been done. The Penn High School administration has consistently failed at making students of color feel safe and addressing these situations when they come up. We were not looking for the offender's name or the disciplinary action they received, but as the affected party, we wanted a guarantee that it was indeed dealt with and a statement explicitly condemning racial slurs, hate speech, and other forms of racism. By not making it clear that there will be punishment for racism, Penn is complicit in allowing its students and staff to continue their behavior.

Second, Penn High School does not even offer us the opportunity to be able to choose diverse classes. In four years of required reading, students usually read only one or two books by a person of color. Many of us in the Class of 2020 have only read one book by a person of color. The others have all been western canon written by white authors. Even the books we read that involve people of color often center around a white character (such as the novels To Kill a Mockingbird and Huckleberry Finn). Not only do these books give a biased and one sided portrayal of African Americans and African American History, but they also enforce the white savior complex. The people of color are not the main character in a story that centers around their struggle; instead, we see how the white characters react and feel about their struggles. In other words, we are consuming white washed history. This is damaging towards students of color compared to white students who don’t have to think twice because reading assignments are catered to them. These stories enforce internalized racism as students of color internalize harmful external narratives about themselves. For white students, it reinforced the idea that white society is more “advanced” and people of color need to be saved. We have also encountered teachers that give us short stories by diverse authors because “College Board likes these sorts of things.” Statements like these enforce an Eurocentric narrative that paints minority voices as less important and tells us that we should only read diverse authors because it will be on a test, not because their stories are important.

Furthermore, Penn High School only offers two history classes: United States History and European History. In our four years of going to Penn, we were not aware that a world history class was offered in replacement of world geography; our counselors did not make this clear to us when we were scheduling. Because of this, even if it exists on paper, the class has not existed for several years and it is currently not possible to take the course because not enough people know about it and sign up to take it. This perpetuates the harmful narrative that the only history that matters is white history through the lens of the experiences of white people. The only time we discuss Africa, Asia, and other places with people of color is when it is in the context of Europeans colonizing them or fighting a war against them. This is the only representation of non-white people and their cultures that many students have a chance to see. Admittedly, we’ve had certain teachers who have acknowledged this lack of representation for people of color and the problematic things that Europeans have done. Unfortunately, that is not a standard experience, especially in our elementary and middle schools. In grade levels below high school, most of what we talked about involving people of color was limited to slavery and Martin Luther King Jr., never modern struggles. The education system presents black history and the black experience as a monolith when in reality, it is diverse and as important as white history. For other students of color, they often find themselves absent in their history classes or presented in problematic ways. We often feed the narrative to young children that the relationship white colonists had with the Native population was harmonious and peaceful, and that Columbus was a savior to Native people and our country. We talk about Thanksgiving and how they taught colonists to grow maize and fish and survive in the New World all while ignoring the genocide of the Native population at the hand of white colonists. We skim over the diseases that were spread, the forced migration into reservations, and especially the forced education given to Native American children that aimed to erase their culture, while these efforts still persist to this day. Hispanic and Asian students may not even see themselves being talked about in the curriculum at all until high school. Even then, we do not fully delve into the history of xenophobia and racism that affect these groups of people. The American education system has thoroughly whitewashed history and the Penn-Harris-Madison district is not an exception. White students may take these limited lessons and come to the problematic conclusion that racism has been eliminated, which is far from the truth. Lessons suggesting that racism is simply a historical negative but now long gone results in these same white students becoming more likely to quietly ignore, or even vehemently deny, the still very prominent and dangerous issues present in the world. In our own community, we have seen white PHM students committing hate crimes, suggesting that systemic racism is a myth, denying white privilege, and creating unwelcoming and sometimes dangerous environments both on and off PHM campuses.

Lastly, one of the most troubling issues that we have seen is the enforcement of systemic racism by our administration. Frankly, the administration does not care about students of color. As mentioned above, the administration does not properly address when racially motivated hate crimes occur and does not take proper action to make the students affected feel safe and welcome. Since its inception, Penn-Harris-Madison has been complicit in systemic racism. Many of the students in PHM first arrived here due to white flight, a phenomenon that occurs when white people do not want to live, interact, or go to school around people of color. When South Bend schools were becoming integrated, many of the parents who did not want their white children going to school with African American children moved into Granger and Mishawaka, and began going to PHM Schools because they were not making an effort to desegregate. Many students that go to Penn are not aware of this history nor are they aware of other problematic actions PHM have allowed, including Mock Slave Auctions in the 1960s. Walking into every PHM school board meeting, we would find a table of all white people deciding policies and budgets for all students. One meeting especially stands out when we heard someone speaking on behalf of the corporation blaming one of our elementary schools for lower standardized test scores because of “an influx of immigrants'' and because the elementary school district includes apartments in a certain part of Mishawaka. They ignore how that school has received less funds than other schools with higher test scores. To this day, the way that schools are funded is problematic and enforces systemic racism. Schools that have more minorities are often Title I schools. At these schools, teachers are paid less, are less likely to receive grants, and generally have less resources than schools in wealthier neighborhoods. We analyzed the amount teachers are paid at PHM elementary schools, and we found that the three schools where teachers get paid the least are all Title I schools: Elsie Rogers, Meadow’s Edge, and Walt Disney. These three schools also had the highest proportion of minorities. Although the way that the districts allocate funds may not be intended to be racist, the effects are undoubtedly so. Due to other racist systems in our society, people of color are more often in lower socioeconomic classes and in poorer neighborhoods. Allocating funds in this manner results in less money put into the education of minority students and students of lower socioeconomic classes, meaning it is more difficult for them to succeed and perpetuates the cycle of poverty and systemic racism.

There have also been many individual cases of covert racism. For the last two years, the principal and administration of Penn High School have tried to stop valedictorians from giving speeches that include the phrase police brutality. Administration told a student writing a speech about police brutality that police brutality doesn’t exist and saying the phrase “all lives matter” would be a “more positive and inspiring message” than one that mentions the phrase “police brutality.” The administration also discouraged a student from including a part in her speech where she talks about a man yelling at her to go back to her country because it contains a personal experience that not everyone in the audience can relate to. They ignore the fact that there are many people in the audience that do relate to these experiences and ignore the value of diverse ideas and experiences. It is vital that these realities and stories are shared with those who may not otherwise hear them, no matter how difficult it may be for the audience; if people of color can live through them, then white people can listen. Additionally, data in 2018 shows that at PHM middle schools, a black Schmucker student is over 11 times more likely to be suspended than white students, and at Discovery, a black student is 7 times more likely (Propublica Miseducation Project). The student population at Schmucker is only 2% black, yet they make up 32% of suspensions. These numbers are appalling considering studies linking student suspensions and higher dropout rates and the administration must acknowledge its racial bias. There are more effective ways to address behavioral issues, and the way students are punished is in serious need of reevaluation.

We cannot excuse an ignorant administration who claims they simply did not know about these issues. The administration carries a direct and life altering influence over students from a variety of diverse backgrounds, and as such the administration should be better educated in the struggles, both past and present, that those students face, including systemic racism. There is a lot of power in education, what students are not taught is just as important as what they are. Our administration and staff must be better. We are hoping by bringing attention to some of these issues, the administration will start to address them and begin the long, but incredibly necessary, dismantling of the heavily ingrained racism woven into the fabric of both the Penn-Harris-Madison school corporation and the American education system as a whole.

Sincerely,

Kingsmen Court Alumni and Penn Alumni

Demands And Timeline

View the full timeline and demands on this document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18Wek_4IX4ugcRVy6eiu_KKnP4tjK5KYDqLAqGM-jnBg/edit

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF:

Acknowledge the past and current racist actions of PHM
Be more open and honest about racism at PHM (ex. incorporate anti-racist lessons into advisory, invite discussions about race and privilige, etc.)
Ensure more accountability for students and teachers that partake in racist actions

TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER:

Actively try to make students of color feel more safe and welcome
Schools should celebrate, plan festivities, school-wide lessons, and/or other recognition of underrepresented groups during specific times
February: Black History Month, May: API Heritage Month, 9/15-10/15: National Hispanic Heritage Month, etc.
Admin and staff to become more educated about systemic racism and the role it plays in education
Require all PHM teachers to undergo anti-racist trainings (ex. intercultural development inventory) to prevent overt and covert (microaggressions, implicit bias, white saviorism, etc) racism in the classroom.

TAKE CARE OF THIS PLACE:

Begin education on prejudice starting in elementary school
Teach more diverse literature in English classes
Add History classes that are not Eurocentric (such as World History)
Make US History classes more inclusive

Forms and statements

We recognize that we do not represent all students and demographics at PHM and if you have a story you would like to share, please continue scrolling or click this link. We are constantly updating a Google doc with these stories shared to us anonymously here. The Google doc is also embedded below at the very bottom of this website. We share these stories in solidarity with victims of racism and to acknowledge the problem and work towards a better school culture and future. We must take care of ourselves, take care of each other, and take care of this place—and this begins with protecting students of color.