Social Justice Committee

Remember Social Justice Committee’s video about being respectful of all student’s sexuality last fall? It had Urbana High School students buzzing “no hetero” throughout the entirety of the day. Social Justice’s activities extend Principal Taylor’s assembles, although you may not have heard if you aren’t involved in the committee.

Along with Gay Straight Alliance, Social Justice Committee supported the eCISSA forum at Parkland Collage in November. The event was a success, not only was it educational, but the stories of hardship invoked an emotional response from the audience. UHS winter-graduate Kendall Johnson and Principal Laura Taylor, who started Social Justice Committee, both spoke on the panel at the forum.

Even more recently, Social Justice Committee has coordinated translators for parent- teacher conferences. This effort helped further communication between parents and teachers, regardless of language.

Currently the group is focusing on two community events for Latina and Latino students. The first is designing a workshop to be held at University of Illinois’ Latino Youth Conference. It will be student led. Social Justice Committee is also planning a Latino/Latina College night.

During the week of February 29, SJC participated in an exchange with Heritage High School in Broadlands, IL. Seventeen UHS students went to the school, Reco Gray, Rita Haber, Javier Leal, Katie Heinricher, Ellis Woodland, Angela Pham, Shaniqua Durgan, Bailie Roy, Tertius Washington-Shelton, Taylor Seten, Lauren Fritzsche, Reneisha Gray, Sean Smith, Tiffany Walker, Kashala McCain, Jazmin Leal and Annie Valocchi.

The idea was to have students from Heritage High School in Broadlands, IL visit Urbana High School, and then for us to visit their school in order to see what each school was like from a different perspective,” participant Rita Haber said of the exchange.

Events that are in the works include a mural, a peer mentoring program and a poverty awareness project.

Angie Franklin and Ellen Dahlke co-chair Social Justice Committee.

“I decided to join the Social Justice Committee because I believe that schools are supposed to be places of hope for all students, but I know that that’s not always the case,” says Dahlke. “Schools all over this country serve certain groups of students better than other groups for various reasons. I wanted to help UHS challenge that inequality.”