TIGARD, Ore. — The Tigard-Tualatin school board recently passed a resolution condemning racism. Turns out the request to do so came from students concerned about problems in the district.
Portland has seen large marches and protests against systemic racism but the issue goes beyond city limits.
“We pretend like racism isn’t happening and we’re tucked away in a cozy little suburb,” said Kavi Shrestha, co-president of the Tigard-Tualatin Student Union.
Students in the Tigard-Tualatin school district (TTSD) wanted to join the call for change.
“We got together and we were like, let’s plan a march. Let’s plan on a march right through those cozy suburbs and let’s make these people feel uncomfortable and let them know that this issue is affecting their communities," said, Abdi Mohamoud, president of the Black Student Union at Tigard High School.
The June 11 march had over 300 students, teachers and neighbors.
They covered the 4.4 miles from Tualatin high to rival Tigard high united by a message, “to bring people together to say there is racism and there’s discrimination happening within TTSD.” Students say ongoing racism, bias and hate plays out in their schools.
Abdi is now a senior but says he's been dealing with hate speech since freshman year. "I remember, oftentimes, I would go to people to talk about it and the people I would go to about a situation that happened, they wouldn’t know how to handle it.”
After years of expressing concerns with no action, students took matters into their own hands. They started a petition demanding a hate speech policy, a diverse curriculum and a commitment for the district to be anti-racist. Inspired by the petition, board member Ben Bowman helped the students write and present a resolution during a June 8 board work session. The board approved the resolution condemning racism 4-1.
"It was a little harder to sell than we would’ve liked, I mean you’d think it’s 2020 committing to adopt a hate speech policy and becoming anti-racist wouldn’t be controversial," said Kavi.
“Our jobs as students is to learn and as a district, they are supposed to provide that safe environment for me and it’s really frustrating that I had to go, had to put so much effort into something, saying that I’m anti-racist when the district is supposed to provide that safety net for me," added Abdi.
The students are hopeful this first step by the board can bring some change.
“This is such a problem in our schools that we are ready to do whatever it takes to finally implement something that will improve the district for my sister coming up in the school district and for the future generation of students,” Kavi said.