COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY
As a student publication, a significant part of our job is representing the young people in our community who may feel their voice and perspective isn't heard. Our platform gives people a voice. We are able to share stories that otherwise might have been missed and direct the spotlight to issues that need to be addressed. A key element in these goals is incorporating diverse perspectives. While I have integrated my discussion of diversity and related themes throughout my reflections in this portfolio, there are two additional points I wanted to highlight regarding Verde's commitment to accurately representing the student body and diversity of our community.
SOLICITING DIVERSE VOICES: BLM LETTERS TO THE EDITORS
As protests took place in our city and across the country in the summer of 2020, the other EICs and I met to discuss how we could best cover the events and lend our support. At that point in time, we had no Black students on Verde and we wanted to use our platform to elevate Black voices in our community not try to speak for them. So we offered the opportunity for Black Paly students to submit their perspectives through writing, art, photos or videos to be reviewed and published on the Verde website. Below is the social media post we made in June publicizing the opportunity.
We ended up publishing two works. The first was a poem by senior Wumi Ogunlade entitled "I can't breathe" and the second was "I am disappointed," an essay by senior Noelle Burwell accompanied by some of her own photos (one of which is seen right). In this way we were able to incorporate diverse voices and use our privilege as student journalists to give our peers a chance to be heard.
DIVERSITY AUDIT
At the end of each semester, we have all staff members do some reflective work which includes a diversity audit that helps us evaluate how well we are meeting our goals of incorporating diverse voices in our work across race, age and gender. Through a google form, Verdites share the information about the sources of each of their stories so we are able to reflect on the representation across the publication. Using this tool, we are able to identify areas where we need to improve. After my first full semester as EIC, our results showed our sources were often skewed towards upperclassman and often didn't have the racial diversity we desired. Moving forward we will encourage our staff to remember the problems we identified and to be active in correcting them in each and every story we write. In our upcoming issue we intend to share resources from JEA's "Finding diverse sources" presentation. On the editing side, we will check to make sure the stories we read through have the representation we strive for across the board with the goal that our next diversity audit will illustrate improved representation.
APPROPRIATE REPRESENTATION IN VISUALS
We are also careful to make sure that the art and photos in our magazine reflect our diverse student body. This means being conscious that we are incorporating diverse skin tones in our images as well as equal gender representation. Sometimes this entails asking our artists to edit their art to include a wider range of ethnicities or adding elements to broaden a design such as for a story covering the holiday season during COVID-19 that initially just included a Christmas tree in their design.
This awareness is visible on our covers as we always have conversations about who will be featured and representation is always a part of that conversation. Of the covers I helped direct as EIC, we have had one Black male student, one Black female student and one white female teacher. When we looked back on these in our discussion of our fourth issue we chose to feature a male Hispanic doctor. However since we ended up going with art rather than photos, we ended up with a somewhat racially ambiguous central figure.
FIGHTING FOR DIVERSITY AND JUSTICE IN OUR COMMUNITY
On Verde, we regularly tackle important local issues in the hopes of changing our community for the better. In addition to individual stories covering topics like one student's experience with racism in Palo Alto or the gender imbalance within STEM fields, our editorials are a powerful way to call for change. In our editorials this year, we have advocated for police reform in "'8 Can't Wait' is not enough," addressed education equity in "Letter to the school board: Furthering student equity and access," and endorsed candidates we believed would move our city towards a brighter future in "Verde's endorsements: City Council, school board, presidential candidate, propositions and measures." In this last one, we hoped to not only choose candidates that would make our city a more diverse and more welcoming community but also candidates that would make the City Council and Board of Education more diverse themselves. All four of the local candidates we endorsed were women as both the City Council and school board were majority male. We also endorsed relatively young candidates who we felt could offer fresh perspectives and add age diversity to the groups. Among the candidates we endorsed were Katie Causey who would've been the first member of the LGBTQ+ community elected to the school board and Raven Malone who was the only Black City Council candidate while the rest were white or Asian.