{"id":3193,"date":"2019-10-24T12:03:28","date_gmt":"2019-10-24T17:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/?p=3193"},"modified":"2019-10-24T13:02:55","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T18:02:55","slug":"public-opinion-on-the-student-life-agreement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/public-opinion-on-the-student-life-agreement\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Opinion On The \u201cStudent Life Agreement\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On Thursday, September 26, 2019 a High School-wide community meeting was held in concern to the newly created \u201cStudent Life Agreement.\u201d At the time of the assembly, many students were unfamiliar with the background of the \u201cStudent Life Agreement,\u201d a document based on students&#8217; concerns on claims of racism and peer disrespect in Grace. The \u201cStudent Life Agreement\u201d states that all students must act respectfully to one another and take part in no action that could, in any way, be considered \u201chate speech.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over the course of the past few weeks, students have been developing their own thoughts regarding the value and overall practicality of the \u201cStudent Life Agreement.\u201d The following is just a small sample of what the community is thinking.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jasper Yang \u201820 \u2014 \u201c<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think it&#8217;s too early to tell what the impact of it is, I mean it&#8217;s started a lot of conversations, but we still have to see how the school board and student disciplinary committee will handle violations of the agreement.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Zach Bernstein \u201821 \u2014 \u201cIt&#8217;s going to have a direct impact on the consequences of racism and how people will act.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Luke Roshkow \u201821 \u2014 \u201cI think it will have absolutely no impact on anything in the school. I hope it does, but to be honest, it probably won&#8217;t.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kumare Vulcain-Sowkey \u201821 \u2014 \u201cI think it\u2019s important that the school has this document.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Henry Pallesen \u201821 \u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s definitely a good start. I wish that it was a little more concrete. I\u2019m glad that we all signed it though.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bella Johnson \u201822 \u2014 \u201cThe document is a good way to keep the community on the same page and to make sure [the school] is a place to feel safe and welcomed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ava Andrews \u201822 \u2014 \u201cI think it\u2019s important that the school is taking steps, whether that be small steps in this case or large steps, and recognizing the feedback students are giving the administration.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Willa Bradshaw \u201823 \u2014 I think it\u2019s very fair. I think it\u2019s good that they [Grace] made people sign it very fast.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Naaz Valvani \u201822 \u2014 \u201cI think Grace is already doing a good job about confronting the issue up front with the students and faculty. I think the Student Life Agreement is necessary for all Grace students and faculty to follow.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dr. Schmidt \u2014 \u201cI\u2019m really grateful that this form was created by the students and not the faculty because kids are already used to adults telling them what they should do and hopefully that\u2019s not the case with this.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ms. Carpenter, Dean of the Class of \u201820 \u2014 \u201cWhen I saw a draft of it, which was at the end of last year, it made a lot of sense and was student-led as an initiative. It\u2019s already had an effect on the school as a result of kids violating the agreement. The feedback I received from the first proceeding was that everything was front and center, that the issue was about penalization and hard consequences, and sometimes the issue is about teaching and learning and understanding. I\u2019m super glad that the students were mindful and thoughtful about the events that occurred. I think that the students who violated the agreement faced the proper consequences. I think the Student Life Agreement was instrumental in making the decision of how to punish children acting in violation of what it stands for.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The majority of opinions from Grace students tell a scattered narrative. Some agree with the enforcement of the \u201cStudent Life Agreement\u201d as a means to hopefully make Grace a more racially conscious environment. Although students feel that the agreement will inspire an important conversation about racism within our community, there are still those who believe that the document won\u2019t have much impact on the school, since the consequences of its violation are vague and inexplicit. Hopefully, the \u201cStudent Life Agreement\u201d will be able to benefit Grace, though only time will tell if the agreement can change a narrative of racial bias, whether implicit or explicit, within our community. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Thursday, September 26, 2019 a High School-wide community meeting was held in concern to the newly created \u201cStudent Life Agreement.\u201d At the time of the assembly, many students were&hellip; <span class=\"read-more-span\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/public-opinion-on-the-student-life-agreement\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Public Opinion On The \u201cStudent Life Agreement\u201d&#8221;<\/span> <span class=\"genericon genericon-next\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":2314,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13,200,7],"tags":[499,256,335,582],"appful":[],"class_list":["post-3193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions","category-recent","category-school","tag-diversity","tag-grace","tag-opinions","tag-student-life-agreement"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9uEnr-Pv","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181105-Grace-Church-284.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3193"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3197,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3193\/revisions\/3197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3193"},{"taxonomy":"appful","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/appful?post=3193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}