Concerns raised over lack of diversity in SF school election results

There is no evidence "diversity" has any positive effects.

Okay, even though it's SF and public schools and administration and other things i normally vilify, let's spin this another way.

She called a meeting with all the student candidates and administration on Wednesday to talk about the best way to move forward.

“We’re not nullifying the election, we’re not cancelling the election and we’re not saying this didn’t count,” Van Haren said.

The email went on to say they were thinking of ways to value the students who won, while increasing the diversity of the group.

Let's say you're the administrator and the demographic is 80% non-white and the overwhelming number of winning candidates were white. (The story doesn't give an exact figure that I could see). If your mission as a educator is partly to see that your students are engaged in society and are active participants in the process, wouldn't it be a good idea to try to figure out how to get the underrepresented numbers of students involved?

That's what it appears to me they're doing. Not setting anything aside, not nullifying any results. Merely tasking the election winners to help come up with ways to engage additional segments of the student body.

I'm trying not to read too much into it, and permit the person at the school with the vested interest to make the call to how to best do that.

As for this,

Parent Bianca Gutierrez said the experience has made her son, a 7th grader, rethink his run for class representative. She said he is discouraged and does not want to be a part of the process anymore.

I think it would be an excellent opportunity to remind my son that as a winning candidate in an election, it's your responsibility to serve what's best for ALL the students. Why would he be discouraged? Did he run to help make the school better, or strictly to stick a feather in his own cap?

It's a rough thing. I'm glad I don't have to balance it all out but this appears on the surface to be an administrator attempting to raise the bar for everyone in the fairest way possible.

It's Middle School, not Tammany Hall.

a reply to: yeahright

Well, did it say why he was discouraged? Did he lose or did he actually earn a seat and now he's being told the election was a problem?

All we know from what I saw is that the results did not match the overall student population demographic in what the principal thought should be the expected way. So she didn't declare the results as valid but put them on hold, presumably to build a new council in a manner she thought best.

We don't know who actually won or even what their ethnicities were.

originally posted by: ketsuko
So she didn't declare the results as valid but put them on hold, presumably to build a new council in a manner she thought best.

That's not what I got out of it at all. Not what it says.

a reply to: yeahright

She is more or less making the assumption that if the council doesn't reflect the exact color ratio of the faces of the study body, then the election results are invalid. It's like saying only brown faces can adequately represent brown kids, only black faces can represent black kids, and do on and so forth. And following from that assumption, leads her to conclusion that if only students one ethnicity or another or not enough of some got elected, then naturally there must have been some shenanigans with the voting. After all, why would brown, black, Asian, or white kids vote against their own best interests by not voting for student reps who look like them? After all, that would lead to a council that looks like a perfect micro-cosm of the student body wouldn't it?

Might as well just instruct kids that they can only vote for candidates of their own ethnicity.

And now that this has happened and kids voted for whomever they chose, not just whomever they chose of their own ethnicity, she has to build a new council made up of the elected reps and a body chosen to look like her perfect microcosm.

This is very much what I got out of it.

a reply to: infolurker

I don't see why they can't adhere to the American time honored tradition of buying the election with promised favors, kickbacks, and sacks of money. Starts those kids off with a healthy dose of reality.

a reply to: yeahright

I would say telling those that voted, including the minorities , that those that they voted for wouldnt be put in place because they werent "diverse" enough would discourage them from voting

Its a prime example of "Your vote doesnt matter" no matter what race, creed, or color you are

a reply to: ManBehindTheMask

Except the kids voted during homeroom. So every kid voted unless they were out of school that day.

It would take a pretty heavy ballot fixing effort to complain that the results were rigged, and you can't really claim student apathy caused a bunch of kids not to vote. They were all given ballots.

Who runs the school? Disney?
Not diverse enough...

(The above statement was sarcasm due to the Star Wars hoo-hah the last few days. But it does hold true for their Marvel Comics division where Captain America is now black, Thor is a woman, Hulk is Korean, one of the two Spider-men is of mixed racial background...)

originally posted by: infolurker
Great lesson for the kids, elections don't count unless the "right" (skin toned) people win. So why participate if you have the wrong skin tone? This Political Correctness insanity is getting ridiculous. Elections are not good if the "results" are not "diverse" enough.

Disvesity is a form of subversion. "Diversiity means less whites' I have nothting against other races and I have no problem with small numbers of people from non white places but diversity is a code word for 'less whites, less national identify and less national pride, make no mitake about that.

There is one very small but very powerful country in the mid east that strongly advocates muticulturalism for all other countries but will have nothing to do with it self. Notice, they did not take any Syrian refugees claming they are not a European nation.

originally posted by: infolurker
Great lesson for the kids, elections don't count unless the "right" (skin toned) people win. So why participate if you have the wrong skin tone? This Political Correctness insanity is getting ridiculous. Elections are not good if the "results" are not "diverse" enough. The principle is teaching them to be "Agents of Change"... LOL

Change to bigots and racists is more like it. Social Justice is just "sanctioned" bigotry and racism against another group.

Gotta get 'em while they're young.