Walking out to protest rape culture
A moving part of this week’s podcast focuses on California’s Berkeley High School, where students were fed up with what they saw as a culture of sexual harassment and assault among their peers. After years of allegedly mishandled allegations, they wanted action from adults in the administration – and they got it.
In February 2020, right before schools went online because of the pandemic, Berkeley students staged a walkout (seen above) and spoke up at a school board meeting after word got out that a student was suing the school for how it handled her report of sexual assault.
“Just because Berkeley can hide behind the idea that it’s a progressive bubble doesn’t mean that Berkeley’s schools can avoid teaching us how to deal with or prevent something we are all aware happens,” one student told the board.
The students’ actions prompted change: By December, administrators announced that they had hired a full-time Title IX coordinator and a full-time Title IX investigator. The district has also set up a committee, made up of mostly students, to lead some of the changes. They’ll help pick a facilitator to design consent education and determine the next steps the school needs to take after that. “It was the student leadership a year ago that led us to make some very meaningful additional investments,” said Superintendent Brent Stephens. It’s too soon to tell whether the shift is permanent, but no matter what, future students will have a blueprint to make change.
Listen to the episode: Protecting kids from abuse
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