The Change Project at Ashland High School is teaming up with the Diversity and Inclusion group to create a more powerful voice. The Change Project is a gathering of students making an effort to reduce and eventually exterminate racism in the community.

Throughout the summer, employees from OSF (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), the AHS staff and students discussed the issue of racism in schools and work environments and how to end it once and for all rather than just glaze over it. These are baby steps to creating the Diversity and Inclusion group at AHS which will help them eliminate racism.

Principal Zundel organized a mandatory workshop on vocabulary and subconscious slang that might appear offensive to students of color. Amy Kennedy, Ashland High School Counselor,  says, “This was the most meaningful inservice I’ve ever been to since I started working here in 2005”. Even though this was a workshop for teachers and staff, this doesn’t mean students aren’t getting involved.

The Change Project is a club that meets every Friday at lunch in room EN-1. The club is focused on racial equality in Ashland High School and how to make high school a more welcoming environment. On Friday, September 19, 2014, a small assembly of six students and three teachers attended the meeting. The Change Project is now working in tandom with OSF for the Martin Luther King Jr.  celebration at the Ashland Armory on January 19, 2014. They are also in the works of creating a MLK celebration that will be more meaningful and personal than an assembly.

The members of the Change Project are striving to raise awareness of the racial injustice in our community and all over the country. Racism isn’t over, but I’m over racism.