Stories from the Not In Our Town network. This week: Mike Schlesinger is an upstander in his community of Marshalltown, Iowa (pop. 28,000). Watch his story.
bullying prevention
Student sit-in at Lewis & Clark College, Amy Rosenheim
By Karissa Tom
Last fall, racist slurs targeting black students at my school rocked my school community. Though black students make up a small minority of the school’s demographic, the hate-filled graffiti and the overheard jokes about “white power” left the whole student body feeling scared and threatened.
The initial reaction was shock and disbelief. At my seemingly accepting school in a politically liberal state, most people who heard about the incidents responded with, “This could never happen here!” Yet the sad truth remains that it did happen and that, when it did, my college as an institution and a community was unprepared for the consequences.