By: Tianyou Lee, Staff Writer

On Sept. 30, the Mills student body attended the Dehumanizing Language Assembly held by the Student Equity Council (SEC), which aimed to promote inclusive language on campus. During the assembly and since, the SEC and students have reported a mixed reaction, which ranges from irony and mockery—the louder response—to some taking the message to heart.

The assembly had covered the historically harmful effects of non-inclusive language, student survey data, and how to avoid certain terms. SEC members presented the majority of the slideshow and the accompanying Kahoot, and Assistant Principal Deyango Harris also gave a speech in the latter half detailing his childhood experiences with anti-Black language.

But as student Naia Germain (11) notes, the most prominent response weeks after the presentation has been students making a joke out of some of the assembly’s contents.

“One of the biggest things that I have heard people making fun of is the replacement words section,” Germain says. “For example, people would be in class and be like, ‘That’s a pretty bizarre thing for you to say,’ because that was one of the replacement words, right? And that’s not a normal thing for someone to say.”

SEC member Bianca Mei Santos (12), who took on a leadership role for this initiative along with Reece Roach (12), told The Thunderbolt that the student group has received “a lot of mixed feedback.”

“We obviously got a lot of positive feedback, people saying that we were so courageous and brave to be up there, and how they didn’t know all of this, and how it was good to know what actually goes on campus,” Santos says. “But I also think a couple of our slides might have been misinterpreted in some way because we had slides with slurs and with explicit dehumanizing language.”

The idea for the assembly first came up at the SEC’s reflection meeting at the end of last year, where they identified non-inclusive language as a key problem on campus. 

“What we did is we came up with a plan of different parts of our project that we wanted to do,” Santos says. “So first, we came up with some surveys because we wanted to get feedback from not just the people in the council, but also the school in general. And we also said we wanted to focus more on the educational aspect, rather than people saying, ‘just don’t do this and don’t do this.’”

The first of their surveys, which was meant to prompt early reflections on campus language usage, was sent to students through teachers during orientation. Then, they worked with the school admin to send out their second on Sept. 25 during FLEX. That survey, which received 694 responses, included questions such as “How frequently do you hear non-inclusive language on campus?” and “What words do you hear most?”

The results showed that 37.5% of students heard non-inclusive language sometimes, 20% heard it often, and 9.9% heard it very often. The n-word was the most commonly heard term, as 44.0% of respondents reported. The second survey’s data would be incorporated into their assembly presentation the following week.

“The quote-unquote ‘end goal’ was getting to this assembly because we wanted to have something mandated and something put out to the masses of why [their] words are important, and the history of specific words,” Santos says.

However, during the assembly itself, Germain noticed that the audience was talkative and “unserious” while the SEC was presenting.

“People were doing that thing where they clap for, like, an obnoxiously long time,” she says. “And there were people laughing and whatever, and joking around. It was pretty clear that no one was really taking it seriously until Mr. Harris went up.”

Germain did notice that there was a shift to “genuine silence” while Harris came up to speak.

Harris describing how he got called the n-word and received lynch threats as a child was “powerful” and “scary to hear,” according to Germain. “ He was speaking from his heart. He was speaking from his memory and his own personal experience,” she says. 

While she found Harris’ section effective, Germain is unsure that other parts elicited the intended reaction.

One section of the SEC’s presentation consisted of terms and expressions to avoid and their suggested replacements, meant to address ableist, homophobic, and anti-Asian language. Germain found that the expressions in particular may have hindered the SEC’s point.

“I do think I get what they were trying to do, but putting, like, ‘gay’ as the word and then the replacement word is like, ‘bizarre’ or ‘weird’ was really sort of sending the wrong message, right?”

These have also become the basis of jokes around the assembly, Germain comments.

Fanny Montes (11) also believes that the replacement words section made the students “a little surprised by the difference in word choice that they presented.” In addition, the “drastic transitions” moving from serious to lighthearted topics gave a “whiplash of emotions,” Montes thinks.

But overall, Montes is optimistic that the assembly had an overall positive effect, even with some joking from the students.

“At least for me, I think that this is one of the best assemblies they’ve ever done,” she says. “The general reaction [after the assembly] has been a bit mocking, to be honest. And I won’t say I’m a saint too. . . . I’ll mock it a little bit, because it felt like some parts were just a bit unnecessarily serious. But I think people have been a bit more conscious with their words, with their word choices.”

One thing Montes suggests for the SEC would be to have an increased focus on anecdotal experiences.

“Maybe if we hear more personal stories of what people have gone through, we’ll be more willing to hear them out, if that makes sense,” Montes thinks. “That seems to have a bigger impact on us because we know that that’s happened.”

The SEC itself is already considering “getting into classrooms and giving more student stories.” Santos explains that initially, the Dehumanizing Language Assembly was meant to include more personal experiences along with Harris’s, but due to a lack of submissions and time restraints, the SEC was unable to put them in.

“One of the positive things from Mr. Harris’s talk is it was dead silent in that theater. So we’re hoping that that really means they were absorbing his words,” Santos explains. “We’re hoping to get more student stories because it’s tangible of what happens and the impact of what happens when there’s [dehumanizing language].”

Another one of the SEC’s next steps is to make an “infographic protocol,” where they would put up posters in each classroom showing steps for students to take action against dehumanizing language.

“They have posters in every classroom of the Stop-It and Title Nine stuff. We’re hoping to create something similar to that,” Santos says. “I think it’s good to have a student protocol, and it gives people resources and a step-by-step of what they should do when they hear it, so they’re not guessing and they’re not wondering if they say anything, will really go anywhere.”

However, Santos and the SEC acknowledge that they likely won’t be able to reach everyone with their initiatives to promote inclusive language.

“Probably the people who need it most, who need to hear it most, aren’t gonna listen,” Santos says. “One of the most difficult parts about putting this all together is acknowledging that we can’t do everything and we can’t solve everything and we could only try our best . . . We could educate, but at the end of the day, it’s up to the students, up to the individual to take that and to implement it into their own life.”