Commitment To Diversity
Diversity, and increasing it is an intrical part of a functional staff. Not only does it increase the amount of representation through story coverage, but it also invites more voices, and by turn more stories, to be told. Throughout my time as Editor-In-Chief and my entire three years of staff, I have written stories that have helped to open pathways of discussion over the topic of diversity in the Grandview community, as well as advising my staff on not styfling their own their voices and to share their experiences in order to expand diversity representation.
Diversity of Staff
I am very proud of the diversity our staff has obtained this year. This helps to invite multiple perspectives and open pathways for discussion regarding coverage and story angles. This also allows us to ensure that all voices are being represented within our coverage as we have people on staff that are a part of different communities and can help illuminate issues or topics that need to be discussed.
White: 16
African American: 5
Asian: 4
Native American: 1
Hispanic: 3
Mixed Race: 1
Staff Total: 30
Our staff's diversity is also very representative of the total diversity at our school. Below is a pie chart that showcases the diversity of our entire school, which is very similar to in structure and numbers to our staff. This allows us to then properly represent all voices within our school and prioritize equal coverage, while also having a staff that is representative of the population whose voices we uplift and showcase through journalism and storytelling.
White: 1471
Mixed Race: 199
Pacific Islander: 5
Hispanic: 467
African American: 239
Native American: 19
Asian: 332
Total School Population: 2732
My own Writing Covering Diversity:
Cirriculum of Equality
During my sophomore year, and my first on staff, a major meeting between various teachers from different departments in the school and representatives from Student Equity (a club which works to expand diversity within the school) occurred. With their story I worked to both recap the discussion and highlight all of the major points. My ultimate goal with this story was to showcase through student's testimonials how increased diversity representation was greatly needed in the Grandview community.
Unified Under One Pack
Also during my sophomore year and first year on staff, I co-wrote a story that covered our Unified Athletics Program at Grandview with how they were adjusting with COVID. This amazing program works to increase diversity in Grandview by connecting ILC students with the rest of the student body. They achieve this through hosting several Unified Athletic sports such as Unified Cheer, Unified Track, and Unified Basketball. With each of these sports having ILC students and other student athletes compete together to build school community. My goal for this story was to review both the Unified Program's goal of inclusion and to hopefully expand the student body's awareness of their mission, with the ultimate goal of hoping to inspire some people to join the program.
Diversity Through Coverage
One of our priorities when selecting leaders is to ensure that they are representative of both our entire staff and school population, including representing people of color. This year we had three managers that were people of color, including Esmeralda Mendez Sanchez, Karisma Flowers, and Almas Marie Elayyan.
Almas Marie Elayyan
Karisma Flowers
Esmeralda Mendez Sanchez
Opinions Writers
Mbone Elango
Evie Hall
Jada Cousin
Evan Deickman
Our Opinions Department also greatly reflects the diversity of our entire staff, as 3 of our 4 Opinions writers (Mbone Elango, Jada Cousin, and Evie Hall) are people of color. Our Opinions writers regularly tackle topics of diversity, race, gender, and inclusion. Throughout my three years on staff, and two in editorial positions, I have continually advised and pushed our staff to not be afraid to highlight issues they see regarding representation and diversity within the Grandview community.
Stories Dealing with Diversity Written by Opinions Writers Include:
Diversity Within Features Department
Similar to Opinions, a priority of my advising as an editor these past 2 years for our Features writers was to prioritize telling the stories of people who may not normally get to share their experiences, which includes prioritizing representation and diversity. Below are several of our feature stories that focus on increasing diversity or representation.
Risha Dahagama
Zoe Casebolt
Maanya Jain
Addi Vandel
Kate Stroden
Leah Cardona
Esme Mendez
Sanchez
Laila Shekarchian
Trey Swanson
Karisma Flowers
Several of our features writers have also expanded their world-view and understanding of diversity this year by covering issues centering around diversity. One example of this is a story written by Zoe Casebolt, a white student, who covered the Syrian and Turkish earthquakes that occurred earlier this year. For this story, she interviewed Grandview Syrian and Turkish students, several of whom has relatives affected by the quakes. This helped to highlight diversity of Syrian and Turkish people within the Grandview community by focusing on tragedies that may normally be forgotten, but also worked to expand Zoe's understanding of the world.
Representation Through Photography
Writing is not the only way that we have highlighted diversity in the Grandview community. We have also photographed and posted several events that showcased diversity as photo galleries.
