Student Leaders Turn Inspiration into Action

Each year around MLK Day, the Upper School creates a program that reflects the work that King worked to accomplish. This year, student leaders Nina Page ‘17 and Patrick Wong ‘17 transformed the program into a dynamic day of workshops inspired by their recent school-sponsored trip to Atlanta for the NAIS People of Color and Student Diversity Leadership Conference.

Nina discusses how the conference motivated her,

“The conference was a place where we all came together to share our ideas about inclusion and diversity — that was the purpose so everyone was on the same page. Coming back to Severn, people weren’t necessarily going to be as comfortable. That was a challenge. To surmount that, we tried to recreate some of the activities from the conference to make a space where people could share their opinions and hopefully not feel shamed.”

With the assistance of faculty advisors Ms. Kourtney Stone, Ms. Melissa Osquist and Mr. Bob Campuzano, Nina and Patrick used lessons learned at the conference to organize a two-part program for the entire Upper School.

In the words of Ms. Stone,

“The students came back from the conference with this energy and vision. That fired everything up — ran the engine. They really wanted it to be a student-to-student experience so we made sure that was honored and helped them achieve their vision.”

Phase One: Anonymous Demographic Survey

In order to talk about our differences, it’s important first to consider what those differences are. For phase one of the program, Patrick and Nina created an anonymous online demographic survey for each Upper School student to complete. They felt anonymity was paramount to encourage participation and honesty. The survey questions were based on work from the conference.

Patrick explains,

“At Severn the discussion about diversity is very centered on race. At the conference, they emphasized core cultural identifiers: age, ability, race, religion, gender, sexual identity, socioeconomic status, and biological sex. It was so much broader than talking about race. We wanted to bring that back to Severn.”

Prior to the workshops, they presented the survey data to the entire Upper School to get students thinking about who they are as individuals and who we are as a community. They asked for volunteers to work as discussion facilitators and garnered a tremendous response from the student community.

Phase Two: Inclusivity Workshop Day

In preparation for the workshops, Nina and Patrick trained the student facilitators. Knowing that these could be difficult discussions, they wanted everyone to be prepared with strategies to handle the groups. Facilitators Ashley Clifford ‘18, Prya Lakhanpal ’17, and Jane Huang '18 offered additional help adopting a set of “community norms for conversation” to guide everyone toward healthy, open and honest discourse. Each facilitator read these before beginning the workshop.


During the sessions, student facilitators read pairs of statements to groups of about 20 students including:

• The US should have tight immigration policies. The US should have loose immigration policies.
• Black lives matter. All lives matter.
• Marriage is necessary for students to have a stable home life. Marriage is not necessary for students to have a stable home life.

Each side of the room represented one of the opposing statements. To agree, students would move to that side, or stand in middle to represent partial agreement. Once in place, students shared their thoughts and talked with one another about why they felt the way they did. Faculty were present, but this was an entirely student-driven program.

Although Nina and Patrick led the charge in organizing this program, they couldn’t have done so without the support of many student volunteers including fellow conference attendees Ashley Clifford '18, Jane Huang ‘18 and Yasmeen Meek ‘18 as well as members of Faces of Severn, Multicultural Student Alliance and United Spectrum, and other students. All of these students are passionate about creating positive change in our community.

Talking About Our Differences Brings Us Together

Particularly with the polarizing election this past year, it can sometimes feel like our individual perspectives divide us. The purpose of this program was to help our students see that we as a community value one another not despite our differences, but because of them.

Ms. Osquist expresses this need for open conversation,

“During the whole election cycle, everyone felt really divided. Whether they agreed or disagreed, nobody felt safe to talk about it. They felt like they weren’t having any meaningful dialogue. What they were doing [in these workshops] was starting to dialogue about some of the issues around race and gender and sexual orientation. That was MLK’s thing. You need people to dialogue in order to change minds.”

Although this was a single program, it is part of a continuum of diversity and inclusion education at Severn. We strive to make sure that every student is represented and heard. We want our students to learn how to express themselves in healthy productive ways — to see the value that our differences bring to our community and as vital reflections of our larger society and world.

A final note from Head of School Doug Lagarde,

"It is our responsibility to constantly pay attention and foster the qualities of an inclusive community; one where everyone is not simply welcomed, but one where each and every person feels as if they belong; one where each and every person can bring his or her full self and be respected."