On January 24th, members of City High’s Student Diversity and Equity Council gathered at Lemme Elementary for a cultural celebration. This event is held at Lemme every year to celebrate different cultures from all over the world.  

The Student Diversity and Equity Council (SDEC) is a student led organization that started last year. One of these members is Michelle Tran-Duong ‘19.

“I believe the overall thing we are trying to accomplish is to spread diversity and bring peoples of different cultures and backgrounds together,” Tran-Duong said.

For the SDEC’s first task, they focused on spreading awareness of serious topics to elementary schools, such as stereotyping and social media.

“SDEC wanted to focus on elementary schools primarily because we thought that it would be a good idea to educate younger kids and introduce certain serious ideas so that they would have some kind of understanding before entering high school,” Tran-Duong said.

For Lemme’s cultural night, members of the SDEC set up a booth to increase awareness of stereotypes and its effects.

The booth included interactive activities for kids to fill out with their parents, as well as a  poster that read “I am not _______.” Members of the SDEC encouraged kids and parents to write down an unfair stereotype on a sticky note, and add it to the poster. By the end of the night, the poster read things such as, “[I am not] just Chinese because I’m Asian,” as well as “[I am not] against pink and purple even though I’m a boy,”.

As for the future, Tran-Duong says that SDEC’s next move is to focus on City High.  

“However, if while planning our events, time allows us to go to a school and talk, we will definitely try to be a part of that,” Tran-Duong said.