The student leaders of the Upper School diversity-related clubs met with Clare MacKenzie to discuss their activity plans for this year.

GSA (Luke Carneal and Jamie DeArmon):

• Honored the Transgender Day of Remembrance with an announcement in Meeting for Worship and a timeline of key events displayed in the student lounge
• The big projects for the rest of the year are the national Day of Silence and the GSA's visits to ninth grade Life Skills classes. They will meet with Ilene to prepare for the class visits.

BSU (Ariel McFarlin and Richard King):

• Preparing for a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day assembly - they will be working with Karen on this
• There is interest in going to see the Blacks in Wax museum in Baltimore; they may be calling on the faculty members of the U.S. Diversity Committee for help in chaperoning this

Chinese Culture Club (Mark Lin):

• The club is planning a trip to Chinatown in D.C. to celebrate the Lunar New Year in February

Korean Culture Club (JK Woo):

• Also planning a New Years celebration

International Club (Denis Mahame):

• Planning an International Movie Night for sometime during 2nd semester
• Will be organizing the annual International Assembly

Attending: Clare MacKenzie (clerk), Eduardo Polón, Will Marbury

• The student diversity survey is being administered this week. English and ESL teachers are handing out the survey instructions in class; students will complete the survey as homework.
• The PA-sponsored showing & discussion of Crash took place on Friday, April 6, with approximately 15-20 students & parents in attendance.
• Members of the GSA plan to attend the All School Diversity Committee meeting tonight (4/9) to have further discussion of the petition to change the school's nondiscrimination policy.
• Next Wednesday (4/18) is the Day of Silence - GSA members are signing up participants during lunch this week.

• Review survey results (student & faculty) & decide how to share with the community.
• Establish goals for next year (what school-wide or Upper School specific initiatives need our support, etc.?)

Attending: Karen Cumberbatch, Clare MacKenzie (clerk), Eduardo Polón, David Hickson, Sydney Jacobs (rep from PA Diversity Committee)

Sydney Jacobs, one of the PA Diversity Committee reps to the All School Diversity Committee, came to the meeting, and our discussion centered on possible collaborations with the PA DC and communication between our two committees.

• The PA DC would like to sponsor a showing of the movie Crash, followed by a discussion with Upper School parents and students. We talked about who might be involved in this (invite student participants from the NAIS Student Leadership Diversity Conference and the National Coalition Building Institute - perhaps they can play a role in leading discussions). There are some concerns about how likely students will be to attend another thing outside of school hours. Sydney and Karen will meet with a group of potentially interested students to gauge student interest, and the PA DC will advertise to parents.

  Another idea suggested was to invite students and parents from nearby schools - Barrie, Good Council.

  (update: Sydney and Clare met with students Ariel McFarlin, Elizabeth Moraff, and Melinda Gilmer on Friday, 2/23 - they expressed interest as well as concern about attendance; they are willing to help with publicity before the event. A tentative date of Friday, April 6 has been suggested.)

• We also talked about the need for greater communication between the PA DC and the US DC, so that both groups can have a clearer sense of what is happening at the respective levels. Meetings like this one, including members of both committees, are a good first step.

Next meeting date: Monday, March 12, 2007

Attendance: Karen Cumberbatch, Ilene Lees, Eduardo Polón, David Hickson

• Members from the various student diversity committees were extended an invitation to meet the US Diversity Committee during an informal lunch meeting. The clerks of the following clubs were in attendance: GSA, BSU, Save Darfur, AIDS Awareness, and Chinese Culture Club. Seven students attended.

• The clubs learned of the All-School Diversity Committee and who reports to it as sub-committees: US Diversity Committee, MS Diversity Committee, LS Diversity Committee, PA Diversity Committee, and Board of Trustees Spiritual Life & Diversity Committee.

• The clerks were extended an open invitation to attend all future All-School Diversity Committee meetings, starting with the next one on Monday, December 11th, at 7:15pm, in the MS Conference Room (upstairs).

• Karen reminded us that Tuesday, November 14 is National Mix It Up Day - she will be asking one of the diversity clubs to take the lead on organizing that day.

• Each clerk was given an opportunity to share its initiatives for the year:

  • GSA: intending to sponsor Mix-It-Up Day on Tuesday, November 14th during US lunch.
  • GSA: hoping to utilize Tuesday, November 21st to partake in "Gay? Fine by Me" T-shirt drive at SSFS
  • GSA: expecting to promote participation of National Day of Silence on April 14th
  • GSA: looking to implement some initiatives to help make SSFS a more trans-inclusive school. A draft of these objectives has been created.
  • BSU: trying to find a speaker to present an assembly in January in honor MLK, Jr.
  • AIDS Awareness: Tuesday, December 1st is AIDS Day. In line with the "Kick-Me Campaign", the club hopes to provide symbolic red tape and T-shirts with various factoids about AIDS awareness.
  • Chinese Culture Club: has been meeting regularly once per week with nine loyal attendants. Accordingly, the club has been introducing each monthly Chinese festival to participating students. Various Chinese students take turns presenting the various customs and traditions.
  • Chinese Culture Club: would like to get involved with WinterFest in some yet undetermined capacity.
  • Chinese Culture Culb: hopes to get involved with International Assembly in February.
  • Save Darfur: sponsored a Movie Night on November 10th showing "Crash" and "Sometimes in April".

• Brainstorming about how to get the clubs' message out beyond their members:

  • US On-Line Newsletter (see Margaret Rosser &/or Bob Hoch)
  • Claim a bulletin board
  • Host an assembly
  • Announcements
  • MFW
  • Videos and other initiatives during Advisory
  • School Newspaper

• Brainstorming about seeking funding for hosting certain speakers, etc.

  • US Activities Budget (see Karen Cumberbatch)
  • US Head Discretionary Budget (see David Hickson)

• Clubs were encouraged to pursue their initiatives and lean on US Diversity Committee for assistance.

Next meeting: Monday, December 11th.

Attendance: Karen Cumberbatch, Ilene Lees, Clare MacKenzie (clerk), Eduardo Polón

• Report on Upper School Faculty Diversity Survey: 31 of 33 Upper School teaching faculty (including full and part-time faculty) responded to the online Diversity Survey administered October 4-6, 2006. Rich is currently working on putting the results into a web-page format for the committee to look at.

• Student survey plans: Clare will email English and ESL teachers to ask them to administer the student survey as a one-night homework assignment. We will create separate passwords for freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors so that we can look at collective data as well as data for each class if we wish to. Clare will type up a generic assignment with instructions that each teacher can hand out. November 7 was suggested as a possible date for administration (first day of the 2nd quarter).

• We will invite the student clerks of diversity related clubs to our next meeting (Nov. 13): BSU, Hispanic Culture Club, French Club, Chinese Culture Club, International Club, AIDS Awareness Club, GSA.

• Karen reminded us that Tuesday, November 14 is National Mix It Up Day - she will be asking one of the diversity clubs to take the lead on organizing that day.

• Clare brought up the fact that the Upper School advisory curriculum this year is geared around socio-economic diversity and asked that we bring up (in future meetings) any issues related to that theme that we hear or think of. (For example: how do teachers know when a student may not have money for supplies like an extra binder, books, etc.? How much are students who don't have up-to-date technology at home disadvantaged in classes? Karen reported that she just found out about an organization that provides computers for students in need - who in our school is responsible for knowing which students would benefit from something like that?)

• Next meeting: Monday, November 13 with student clerks.

Attendance: Karen Cumberbatch, David Hickson, Ilene Lees, Clare MacKenzie (clerk), Will Marbury, Eduardo Polón, Rae Sumihara

• Conference in First Class system. A conference will appear on committee members' First Class desktops as "US Diversity '06-'07". Time sensitive items such as meeting reminders will be sent directly to members' inboxes, but meeting minutes and notes on ongoing projects will go to the US Diversity conference where they can be archived for later reference.

• Administering the survey - suggestions:
  

  • administer in multiple advisory periods, with advisories taking turns in the computer labs & library?

  • administer as a one-night homework assignment in English / ESL classes? -- this is the option we decided upon. Action: Clare will ask for the English Dept's cooperation at the next Department meeting (10/18) and will contact Bim as well.

  Administer to faculty first so that English teachers can see what it is we're asking them to help with. Action: Clare will ask Rich to open the conference on 10/4 and leave it open for 48 hours. Instructions to the faculty during USMFB on 10/4.

  Action: Draft the "assignment" for English teachers to hand out to students when we administer the student survey (probably in November). Any volunteers for this task?

  David brought up that there may be a benefit to trying to track the data in smaller batches, so that if there's any problem with data collection it would be likely to affect a smaller pool. I asked Rich about this and he reported that as it works now, all of the data would be collected on the same database (even if separate passwords are used). We can look at separate results if we include some separating signifier on the survey (whether it's class year or password, etc.), but we sacrifice the readability of the results if we actually save them into separate folders because we can't then ask the database to sort the information in helpful ways.

• For future discussion: Karen brought up concerns about student retention for African American students and/or students from urban backgrounds.

Attendance: Ilene Lees, Eduardo Polon, David Hickson, Will Marbury, and Clare MacKenzie

• Survey

  • We viewed the surveys and made necessary changes to grammar and format

  • Ilene will send the changes to Margaret

• Focus for Next Year

  • Clare has agreed to be the Clerk of the Diversity Committee and Ilene and Eduardo will be mentoring clerks

  • Our goals for next year will be to administer the survey and support the diversity clubs

Attendance: Ilene Lees, Eduardo Polon, Clare MacKenzie

• Diversity Survey

  • The survey has been created by Rich and Ilene and Margaret will work on the format

  • The URL for the surveys are www.ssfs.org/sdc and www.ssfs.org/fdc

  • Once the survey is administered in the fall we will be able to compare the data to the survey done in 2002

  • Our next meeting will take place in Bob's office so we can all view the survey

• Focus for Next Year

  • We should help each diversity club have one task for next year to help focus their group meetings during the year

  • Could we focus more on economic diversity?

    • The LS is having a part of their newsletter focus on tips for how to be smart with your money and sensitive about economic diversity - it is titled Cents and Sensibility
    • What could the US do?
      • Could the US have a similar section in the school newspaper?
      • Students could generate a list of facts about different diversity groups
      • The 9th grade Life Skills class uses the GSA students as guest speakers each year to talk about sexual orientation, could this be expanded to include other diversity clubs?

Attendance: Ilene Lees, Eduardo Polon, Karen Cumberbatch, David Hickson

• Diversity Survey

  • We looked through the student and faculty surveys and we decided not to change any of the questions

  • We will add 2 questions to the student survey

  • New questions Student Survey: 1. SSFS is a community where a diversity of ideas and viewpoints can be expressed in the classroom 2. Students demonstrate respect and consideration for faculty members

  • Before the survey is put online, we need to think about what we are going to do with the new data

  • We want to give Vanessa plenty of time to make this survey look as good as possible

• Reverend Ransom is coming to school on March 14th

  • Eduardo will talk with Ken to find out what is the topic for the Reverend's student assembly

  • Ilene will remind the student diversity leaders to meet the Reverend for lunch

  • Eduardo read new stats:

  • Percent of African American students was 11% and is now 11.1%
  • Percent of Multiracial students was 9.9% and is now 10%
  • Percent of Hispanic students was 2.0% and is now 2.6%
  • Percent of Aisan students was 5.0% and is now 5.3%

• Looked at the letter from the members of the Learning Differences Committee

• Ilene asked the committee to think about a new clerk for next year

• Our next meeting will be on Fri April 21st during lunch

Attendance: Ilene Lees, Eduardo Polon, Karen Cumberbatch, Will Marbury, and Clare MacKenzie

• Eduardo went over the agenda for Reverend Ransom

  • The only change is that the students will have lunch with Reverend Ransom in the Dining Hall, not The Athletic Center

• Eduardo went over the list of acts for The International Assembly

• Ilene reported that Vanessa can help to make an online diversity survey to be administered next year

  • Need to check if the survey can be administered through the school's website

  • Survey should be anonymous

  • We could have the English classes take turns going to the computer lab to take the survey

  • The surveys could also be administered during advisory

  • It would be better to take the survey during English because those classes are staggered throughout the day and Advisory is not

  • Clare will talk with the English Dept about this idea

  • The student and faculty survey needs to be emailed to Vanessa by Karen or David

  • The goal for this year will be to set up an online survey, not administering it

• Business

  • Eduardo will email Vanessa about the Foreign Language Department's class evaluation online survey

  • Ilene brought up the issue of stepping down as Clerk at the end of this year

  • Our next meeting is scheduled for Friday March 10th during lunch

Members in attendance: Ilene Lees, Eduardo Polon, David Hickson, Clare MacKenzie
Students - Albert Gentry, Sarah Harshberger, Jessica Fields, and Yeri Lee

• Club Information

  • International club will meet next week to discuss plans for the fashion show

    • Yeri Lee is the student in charge of the fashion show

    • She will need to get costumes, chose music, students/faculty to participate, find an announcer, talk to Bruce about lighting, arrange for a practice

    • Ilene will help identify who can lend costumes for the show

  • GSA is still meeting regularly and they will begin planning for the Day of Silence

  • BSU and ALAS want to have a mixer on campus on April 27th

  • BSU wants to recognize Black History month with posters in the US and an announcement during MFW

    • They will talk about having a step dance in the international assembly

  • ALAS has been meeting for weekly discussion groups and they want to plan a dinner

• Eduardo announced the agenda for the speaker Reverend Elbert Ransom

  • Student leaders and faculty will have a special lunch with the Reverend on March 14th in the Athletic Center multi-purpose room

  • The lunch will include Ilene, Eduardo, Karen, David, Clare, Will, Yeri, Mark, Albert, Jessica, Misa, Helene, Arianna, Sarah, Jo, and Leo (Ilene will remind students and faculty before this lunch)

  • The Reverend will have an assembly in the morning and the student leaders listed above will ask questions at the end of the presentation

• Student Diversity Survey

  • The committee does want to administer the diversity survey from 2003 online either this year or next year

  • David will email a copy of the survey to Vanessa

  • Ilene will talk with Vanessa about how to get this survey created on the web site

    • We want to make sure that each student can take this survey only once and we need to be able to include check marks and free responses

    • At our next meeting we will go over the survey and see if we want to make any changes

• Our next meeting is Friday Feb 10th in the 9th grade office.

Members in attendance: Ilene Lees, Eduardo Polon, David Hickson, Will Marbury, Clare MacKenzie, Karen Cumberbatch
Students - Albert Gentry, Helene Jones, Emily Naumberg, Jessica Fields, and Yeri Lee

• Introductions were made and explanation given regarding why we are meeting with the student leaders of the diversity clubs

  • Diversity Committee will help clubs to plan/organize activities that they want to do during the year

  • Emphasized that there should be one major goal for each club and they should keep an eye on opportunities that already exist on the calendar like the International Assembly

• Each club leader spoke about their current plans

  • BSU - had a bake sale for Katrina relief and raised $120, want to have a mixer with other school's BSU clubs, they want to plan an assembly in Feb for Black History month

  • MCC - this club has not met yet but Helene wants to focus on Mix it Up Day in Nov and how to make this a more meaningful event, this club may also join the BSU with their mixer

  • GSA - will do the National Day of Silence, work with the 9th grade Life Skills classes, and possibly plan an assembly or a forum with school community speakers

  • International Club - focus on the assembly and fashion show (may have a different focus this year), will sponsor 3 potluck dinners, will plan a service project for Pakistan, India, etc

  • ALAS - will participate in the International Assembly, disaster relief for Guatamala, want to plan a Latin Dance Night (maybe combined with BSU Mixer), and do community service project for the SED Center

• The Diversity Survey from 2002

  • This survey could be reproduced on-line on the school's website

  • We will discuss during our next meeting if we want to do that this year

• Our next meeting will be on Fri Nov 11th in the dining hall during lunch.

Members in attendance: David Hickson, Ilene Lees, Eduardo Polon, and Will Marbury

• We want to work with the students from the 5 diversity-related clubs:
  
  GSA Gay/Straight Alliance
  MCC Multicultural Club
  ALAS Alliance of Latin American Students
  BSU Black Student Union
  CCC Chinese Culture Club
  IC International Club

  • We will invite all of the aforementioned club leaders to our next meeting on October 28th and tell them how we hope to be able to help their clubs

  • Following the October 28th meeting club reps will only need to come to our meeting when particularly relevant or desired, though we will intentionally begin meeting with each one at a time, starting with the MCC in November to discuss their sponsorship of Mix it Up Day, to ensure that each club feels supported and motivated towards fulfilling one significant task relevant to their club this academic year (e.g., International Assembly, Mix It Up Day, National Day of Silence, Black History Month, International Potlucks, Guest Speakers, etc.)

• Our meeting times will be on Fridays once a month during lunch and we will meet at a reserved table in the Dining Hall

  • We will meet before the All-School Diversity meetings usually the 2nd Friday of the month:
    
    Friday, October 28th
    Friday, November 11th
    Friday, December 9th
    Friday, January 13th
    Friday, February 10th
    Friday, March 10th
    Friday, April 7th (no school on the 14th)
    Friday, May 12th

• Do we want to re-administer the Diversity Survey established back in April of 2003 to the students this year?

  • Ilene will talk with Rich and Douglas about what it will take to design this survey on-line

  • Will will research an online company that produces surveys

  • The students could possibly take this survey during advisory

  • Re-administering the survey this year would allow us to compare the results of this year's 12th grade students with the results that we have from when they were in 9th grade and see if there has been any change of opinion during their time here at SSFS.

• The PA Diversity Committee wants the school to focus more on increasing the diversity of the faculty - How can our committee help accomplish this task?

  • We could make a public statement about where we want to be as of next year. Our benchmark, for example, could be that the diversity of the US faculty should match that of the student body

  • The Department Heads will continue to examine how to evaluate their roles and formalize a policy in this regard

  • To help empower our student leaders, we could have the leaders of the various student diversity clubs help interview potential applicants for teaching positions in the Upper School

Members in attendance: David Hickson, Karen Cumberbatch, Ilene lees, Eduardo Polon, Lillie DeArmon, Emma Silverman, Will Marbury, and Sarah Harshberger

• 1. We welcomed the new Clerk of the GSA

• 2. Eduardo spoke about the All School Diversity Committee Meeting on 5/23/05

  • Changes made to the web site

  • 6 US questions were added to the FAQ page

    • How do we balance economic diversity?
    • What does the ISP add to the SSFS community?
    • Does SSFS have an anti-discrimination policy?
    • How does our ethnic diversity compare to other independent schools?
    • What is the diversity of our faculty and staff
    • Why do went have so few Hispanic students at SSFS?

• 3. This is our final meeting for the year

  • We will start our meetings in Sept but we will no longer meet on Tuesdays
  • We will continue to meet after the All School Meeting for Business

• 4. Thoughts for next year

  • Karen brought up that Friends Seminary School has a day of concern with speakers and workshops around issues of diversity

Business Notes

• Eduardo reported on the discussion from the All School School Diversity Committee Meeting

• Several small changes will be made to the diversity web site

• The FAQ page will be created as soon as possible

• An additional link will be added titled: Conference Reports & Articles

• Eduardo will compile all of the questions from the 3 divisions and will send the All School Diversity Committee a copy of Mecha’s answers to the US questions

• Our next meeting will be held after the All School Diversity Committee Meeting on Tuesday May 24th during lunch

Club Updates

• GSA is planning to recognize the National Day of Silence on April 13th

• 30 students have already signed up for this day and they will be given stickers and T-Shirts

• The guest speaker from last week was well received by the 55 students who attended

• The GSA will be discussing who the 2 co-leaders and recording clerk will be for next year

• Karen discussed the possibility of having a Black Student Union on campus next year

• Jemy Crookes went to the Metro DC High School Diversity Conference last month

Review of FAQ’s

• We reviewed the answers from admissions to our questions about economic diversity, the International Student Program, our anti-discrimination policy and our comparison to other schools

• We also reviewed the questions that were asked from the LS and MS

• The LS questions focused on the economic diversity of our school and focusing on "How do we support the financial needs of our students beyond tuition assistance?" We discussed this question in depth.

• We considered adding another question: "Is financial assistance for extra-curricular activities available to families who don’t qualify for financial aid?"

• The MS came up with a good idea of asking more open-ended questions and have the answers potentially be in the form of quotes from students, parents, and faculty

• We will work on forming a question that points out that students who receive a % of financial aid for tuition receive that same % for extra-curricular activities

1. Business Notes

   • We have decided to change our meetings from 7th period to Lunch

   • Our Lunch meetings will be held on the 2nd Monday of each month in Eduardo’s classroom

   • We are hoping for more consistent attendance from faculty and students at this new time

   • We will be inviting Mecha and Rob to our next meeting

2. Club Updates

   • GSA is planning to recognize the National Day of Silence in April

   • The reps for this club will make an announcement during 2 MFW times and at the USMFB on March 2nd

   • They will use this opportunity to educate the faculty and students about how to make our school a more safe place

   • They will ask for a commitment from the students and they will need to sign an agreement that they will take the Day of Silence seriously

   • Ilene will arrange for a guest speaker to come and talk to the students about respecting alternative lifestyles

   • The goal for this day is to have more participation and more integrity

   • The members of the GSA could wear the GSA T-shirts during this day

3. Review of FAQ’s

   • We would like to remove the "as stated above" from the last question

   • When we asked, "how does SSFS compare nationally, locally and statewide," what are we comparing it to?

   • We want to develop a question that will address if the students feel welcomed and included in this community

   • An example of an answer could be "Although the racial and ethnic diversity decreases as you climb the divisions, among the student body feelings of inclusiveness strongly resonate"

   • We could also direct them to the survey results from 2 years ago

1. Eduardo addressed the US Diversity Committee about the All School Diversity Committee meeting that was held in December:

   • We went over the memo from Mecha that compared our ethnic diversity with that of 74 other area independent schools

   • Our statistics are very comparable to the other schools

   • We have a high population of African American students in the Lower School, less in the Middle School and much less in the Upper School

   • We have a lower population of Latino/Hispanic students compared with the other schools

   • Some reasons include that the other area independent schools include Catholic Schools that have a much lower tuition

   • Eduardo has a very detailed report of SSFS population statistics if anyone is interested in looking at those

   • The All School Diversity Committee liked our idea to have a FAQ page on the diversity web page

   • Each division was assigned the task of writing questions of their own and our committee will review our questions and reword them if necessary

2. Review the main points of the last discussion that we had about diversity and admissions. Where do we go from here?
   We looked at the questions that we had proposed and reworded some of them in the following way:

   • Does SSFS give out athletic scholarships?

   • How does SSFS determine financial aid awards?

   • Does it differ from division to division?

   • How does SSFS compare nationally, statewide, and locally with other independent schools?

   • Relative to the county demographics stated above, why aren’t Latino students better represented at SSFS?

   • We deleted the question that read: Where do we stand compared to other independent schools?

3. Ask the club leaders if there are any projects that they need help with

   • The International and Cultural Clubs want to have a scary movie night to raise money for their clubs

   • The International Club will be organizing and hosting the International Fashion Show this year

   • We offered suggestions for how to get started

   • Talk to Brooke Carroll

   • Ask if any dorm students have traditional clothing and ask Mecha, Eduardo, Karen Cumberbatch, Bim, and Rae if they have any international clothing

   • Talk to Karen Levine who organized the fashion show last year

   • The assembly date is Thursday, March 3, from 9:35am-10:35am in Clifton Performing Arts Center

   • Make sure to invite the Lower School to attend

Discussion with Admissions Department: Mecha Inman & Rob Jones

1. Karen read the pertinent results of the 2003 Student & Faculty Diversity Survey:

   • 80% of the students said that they wanted more ethnic diversity and 74% said they wanted more socioeconomic diversity.

   • Some comments from the students included that they thought the tuition was too high and that race should not be a determining factor for admission into the school.

   • Most of the faculty feel that the ISP is not integrated with the rest of the school.

   • Some of the students think that there are lower standards for admission of international students.

   • Faculty are concerned about the diversity within the ISP.

2. Eduardo suggested that the Diversity Committee and Admissions work together on a FAQ page on the website to address commonly asked questions about diversity. Some of the issues might include (with partial answers and/or brain-storming direction):

   • Q: Why does the US have less ethnic diversity compared to the LS and MS?

   • Q: Why does the US not give out athletic scholarships?

   • Q: Why doesn’t the US give more money towards financial aid?
     A: Due in large part to the youth of SSFS, our school currently spends 88% of the budget on running the school where as older more established schools spend 40%-60% of their budget on running their school, because they have large endowments that pay the rest. Consequently, those schools can afford to offer financial aid up to 90% of demonstrated need to their students whereas SSFS currently can only offer financial aid up to 70% of demonstrated need. This trickles down to socioeconomic diversity because we can’t offer as much money as other schools.

   • Q: Relative to the county demographic, why do we not have a lot of Latino students at SSFS?
     A: In part, parents of Latino students for the most part are looking for a Catholic education. In addition, there is a generalized misconception about Quaker schools.

   • Q: How does SSFS compare nationally with other independent schools when it comes to diversity?

3. Other questions that could be asked on the FAQ page (with partial answers and/or brain-storming direction):

   • Q: How do we balance economic diversity at SSFS?
     A: 19% of our students receive financial aid, this number jumps to 26% when you take into account the tuition remission that is given to faculty students. We give less money but to more people. SSFS is a young school without a large endowment.

   • Q: Why does SSFS have an international program?
     A: We strive to diversify within the ISP

   • Q: Does this school have an anti-discrimination policy?
     A: Mention the clubs, ISP…

   • Q: Where do we stand compared to other independent schools?
     A: compare to AIMS, NAIS and AIGSW

   • Q: What is the diversity of the faculty?
     A: Look at age, religion, color

The goals of this committee for 2004 are:

1. Support Student Clubs:

   1. Act as a sounding board for student clubs and help them to "make things happen"

   2. Help the clubs to connect in an effort to put together an assembly or presentation to the upper school

2. Focus On the Issue of the Lack of Diversity In the Faculty

   1. This group will invite the head of Admissions and the upper school admissions person to one of our committee meetings (this will happen on Nov 9th)

   2. This will give the admissions office a chance to discuss what they are doing to increase diversity and we can brainstorm other ideas

   3. We will talk to the members of Torch about the results of the survey and invite them to discuss this issue with this committee

3. Look At the Lack of Integration of the International Students

   1. We will invite the head of the ISP program to talk with this group

   2. We will talk to the members of Torch about the results of the survey and invite them to discuss this issue with this committee

Our overall mission for this group is to give voice to the appropriate school staff and students and empower them to promote discussions about issues related to diversity in our school. As a result of these discussions we could generate ideas to help increase diversity on a broader scale

• Since this meeting served both as the last All-School Diversity Meeting of the academic year as well as the most recent All-School Diversity Meeting since February, it was primarily used as a recap of events this most recent semester. As such, the US reported that April 21st saw the return to SSFS of the National Day of Silence, sponsored by our Upper School GSA club (see Events). "The Day of Silence, a project of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) in collaboration with the United States Student Association (USSA), is a student-led day of action where those who support making anti-LGBT bias unacceptable in schools take a day-long vow of silence to recognize and protest the discrimination and harassment -- in effect, the silencing -- experienced by LGBT students and their allies."

• In addition, on April 22nd the Reverend Paula Lawrence Wehmiller visited SSFS. Reverend Wehmiller will be working with SSFS next year during our faculty orientation meetings in September and again in February. She specializes in nourishing the spiritual development of schools, integrating school and community, building more inclusive communities, and nurturing peace and justice. She will be visiting all day in order to learn more about SSFS and our current needs.

• Canceled

• The majority of the US Diversity Committee report consisted of introducing the All-School Diversity Committee to the newly designed Diversity at SSFS website. A launch date of March 8th was agreed upon to coincide with the next SSFS Board of Trustees Meeting. At this Board meeting Margaret Malone, Director of External Communications, and Eduardo Polón, US Diversity Rep and Board Faculty Rep, along with Clerk and Board Member Marilyn Gilmore will represent the All-School Diversity Committee in giving a similar presentation.

• In addition, student representatives from the Open Door Club, SSFS' Gay/Straight Alliance, shared with the All-School Committee their plans to participate in Food & Friends, a Metropolitan DC volunteer program that prepares and delivers meals predominantly to people living with AIDS.

• Meeting postponed due to inclement weather.

• The Prejudice Reduction Workshop was held for 10th, 11th and 12th graders. At the same time the 10th through 12th graders were doing this workshop, the 9th graders were off campus doing community service. The 9th graders will be trained in prejudice reduction by the 10th through 12th graders later in the spring.

• The new Quakerism curriculum is in progress during the advisory period.

• The Prejudice Reduction Workshop for 10th through 12th graders is coming up on November 19th. The 10th and 11th graders will, in turn, train the 9th graders in the spring of 2004.

• The Counseling Department introduced the following films to the US: Trevor, Tough Guise and Killing Us Softly.

• On November 6th a group of Eskimos from the Upic Tribe presented a fascinating and entertaining cultural assembly to the entire US.

• To help improve the integration of US intenational students, the idea of Torch Buddies was introduced. After discussion with Bim Schauffler, head of the ESL program, Torch members would assign themselves a particular international student or two, as need be, with whom it was felt things were shared in common. Dean of Students Karen Cumberbatch might be the ideal sponsor for this.