Students protest in the halls of Sandalwood High School for non-racial posts

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A student demonstration at Duval County’s largest school.

Students at Sandalwood High School took an outing on Wednesday after a series of online reports sparked outrage.

It all started on Tuesday with a report on Microsoft Teams from the principal, Sandalwood High School, dr. Saryn Hatcher. This was to promote the school’s district awareness campaign this month.

The campaign, “You Matter Month”, caused many students to be furious because they thought it was a replacement for Black Lives Matter and added the Black History Month, which is also in February. DCPS spokeswoman Tracy Pierce said the district recently turned the trademark of the campaign from its original message #TakeOffTheMask, after causing confusion and unintentional mixed messages, prompting the Florida Times-Union for the first time. times reported.

Then students allegedly posted race-insensitive comments about the Microsoft Teams thread and the principal eventually closed the entire thread.

News4Jax spoke to the organizer and one of the protesters and they explained what caused them to walk out of class.

“It was then that I like, ‘okay, this is the last straw. We are not heard, ‘said student and organizer Jara Enoch. “Our ideas and our concerns are not expressed, because at the moment we are being silenced. Therefore, I decided to do the post, I calmly said: everyone can walk out at 12:30. And we’re going to protest it in the cafeteria. ”

“We just felt for our school to have such a low respect for us,” student Jodi Price said. “We felt the need to wear black and to walk around the corridors and sing ‘Black Lives Matter'”, because we feel that our voices are not heard enough because of what is currently happening, you know, a lot of violence and so on. “

Both students said there are meetings with school administrators on Thursday.

According to district spokeswoman Tracy Pierce, there was no physical violence and no injuries were reported. There was slapping on the tables and standing on tables, but there was no damage to the school’s property, Pierce said.

Extra police officers were called to the school at the end of the two-hour demonstration, but they were not involved at all, they were only there to make sure no one entered or left the campus without authorization and to make sure that the the campus was safe, the district said.

Senior Vice President Kimberly Williams, 17, of Sandalwood High School, said although the protest did not go exactly as planned, there were still issues at the school that needed attention.

‘Because I’ve been to Sandalwood for four years, I’ve witnessed peer racism, racist remarks in my classes, and personally I did not know how to attack it and feel I do not have a strong enough voice to do anything. do not say. “Nobody really did that,” Williams said. “I just feel like we need to have a meeting so we can talk about it and make it known … instead of pushing it down and ignoring it.”

Williams and other members of the student government plan to meet with school administrators to find the best way to move forward and find productive discussions.

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