By the 53rd AFRO-LATINX EXONIAN SOCIETY BOARD

Guest Contributors

There is a stigma around certain clubs on campus: the Big Five, as we call them. They are seen as the most prestigious on campus because of endowment or number of awards or time commitment. But we truly believe that the clubs that ask the most out of its members are BIPOC-centric groups. It's not exactly the group itself, but being a leader for an entire community of underrepresented, oppressed students. Children, actually. We are children, yet we have to forge ahead for the next generation of BIPOC Exonians and maintain the joy, vibrance and support of our community. 

We love our community here on campus. We love coloring on the table of OMA. We love listening to music and laughing after ALES. We love watching Netflix in Club Room B. But every day, we have to protect what little we have. Protecting our community is always turning off Do Not Disturb so we can answer sobbing voices at 2:00a.m. Protecting our community is being a sibling, mentor, friend and parent in our dorms because we have never had a dorm affiliate or dorm head of color. Protecting our community is allowing the administration to use us as diversity puppets while our emails go ignored. Protecting our community is getting physically assaulted by a teacher at a protest and going to his class the next day. We fight, and we fight and we fight, but we’re tired.

The happiness, equality and safety of younger students is too heavy a burden for seventeen-year-olds to bear. As an anonymous ALES member put it, “PEA students and community members must understand that BIPOC are as or even more capable of the achievements non-BIPOC students have at school. It is our trauma with racism and racial exclusion that prohibits many of us from pursuing the same goals a ‘white’ or [white-identifying] student pursues. Racism takes time and energy. Racism constrains our knowledge and experiences during youth that other students are inclined to have. We are all equal and as capable, but the world has not been equitable.”

But none of this is new. ALES is an organization that has been led by student activists for over 53 years, and we owe so much to the time, energy, and effort they contributed to making Exeter a more inclusive place. However, this history often goes unacknowledged. Their voices go silenced by the Academy community’s deafening applause for Principal this and Dean that because they finally decided to implement changes that BIPOC students had been calling for years prior. The students that have sacrificed their time, energy and effort go ignored, unthanked and unpaid. 

While student activists inarguably love the work that they do and the communities that they represent, it would be hard to ignore the toll their activism takes on their ability to be successful students at PEA. Instead of studying, BIPOC student leaders are asked to spend time advocating for equity in a slew of meetings, proposing well-researched policies and plans, all while cultivating community and maintaining a club. Administrators like the Director of Equity and Inclusion and the Dean of Multicultural Affairs have worked to lighten this load, but the reality is that we still need BIPOC students’ perspectives to enact effective change. Adults on campus are paid to do this kind of work, so why aren’t we officially crediting these students? Why aren’t student advocates offered class credit or payment for their work? Furthermore, why do our voices often go unheard?

When we pointed out the vagueness surrounding faculty of color retention plans, the response was “We’re working on it.” When we pointed out the repeated reported incidents of attacks on personhood by faculty, the response was “We don’t fire people here.” 

During a conversation with Principal Bill Rawson after the release of his Diversity, Equity and Inclusion updates, we spent half the time talking about his experience at Exeter. At the end of the meeting, we were cut off because of time and told to follow up with an email. We sent those emails, but a response never came. 

We don’t want our frustration to be mistaken for hatred. We believe that this institution has the potential to live up to its title as the best high school in the nation for future BIPOC students. And, as is likely the case for generations of ALES members, we love our school enough to fight to make it a better place.