Students protest in Sandalwood High School hallways after racially insensitive posts

JACKSONVILLE, Florida. – A student demonstration at the largest school in Duval County.

Sandalwood High School students went on strike on Wednesday after a series of online posts sparked outrage.

It all started on Tuesday with a post on Microsoft Teams by Sandalwood High School principal Dr. Saryn Hatcher. The goal was to promote the school district’s mental health awareness campaign this month.

The “You Matter Month” campaign made many students indignant, thinking it was a replacement for Black Lives Matter and, by extension, Black History Month, which is also in February. DCPS spokeswoman Tracy Pierce said the district recently changed the campaign brand from its original message “#TakeOffTheMask” after it caused some confusion and inadvertent mixed messages, first reported by the Florida Times-Union.

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Then, the students allegedly posted racially insensitive comments on that Microsoft Teams topic, and the principal ended up closing the entire topic.

News4Jax spoke to the organizer and one of the protesters and they explained what made them leave the class.

“So that’s when I thought, ‘ok, this is the last straw. We are not being heard ‘, ”said student and organizer Jara Enoch. “Our ideas and concerns are not being expressed because we are currently being silenced. So, I decided to do that post, I said peacefully, everyone can leave at 12:30. And we are going to protest in the cafeteria. “

“We feel that our school has such a low level of respect for us,” said student Jodi Price. “We felt the need to wear everything black and walk the hallways chanting ‘Black Lives Matter’ because we feel that our voices are not being heard enough because of what is happening today, you know, a lot of violence and stuff.”

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Both students said they have meetings scheduled with school administrators on Thursday.

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

There were extra police officers called to the school at the end of the approximately two-hour demonstration, but they were not involved, they were just there to ensure that no one entered or left the campus without authorization and to ensure that the campus was safe, the district said.

Senior vice president at Sandalwood High School, Kimberly Williams, 17, said that although the protest did not go exactly as planned, there are still issues at school that need to be resolved.

“Being at Sandalwood for all four years, I witnessed racism among colleagues, racist comments in all my classes and I personally didn’t really know how to attack and I feel like I didn’t have a strong enough voice to say anything, really nobody did ”Said Williams. “I just feel like we need to have a montage so that we can talk about it and make it known … instead of pushing it down and ignoring it.”

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

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