I am an alumnus of Fremont Unified School District. I attended Mission San Jose Elementary, Hopkins Junior High, and Mission San Jose High School (Class of 2018). Various institutions across the country have been using the recent months as an opportunity to recognize instances of racism, injustice, and abuse in themselves. I am writing to discuss some of my & my peers’ experiences at Mission San Jose High School and the ways that some of our teachers and administration perpetuated a culture of favoritism, racism, and abuse.I do not believe that my administration has taken student complaints seriously, nor is our broader community aware of the extent of abuse that occurs, so I have begun documenting some of these experiences in this open letter. Over the past few days, I have spent extensive time confirming these experiences with several peers and students at MSJHS and sanity-checking that this sentiment is worth sharing. Simultaneously, I don’t want to generalize this experience to the entire student body. I just think there are enough students that agree with me to prompt a discussion.

I want to preface this by stating that I am aggressively pro-teachers. Throughout my time at MSJHS, I had several teachers that influenced me in extremely positive ways and instilled a lifelong love of learning — something I will be eternally grateful for. In high school, I helped a movement to raise teacher wages when the district was paying them unfairly. I firmly believe that our school district does not do nearly enough to protect teachers. I also believe that the district does not do nearly enough to protect students from selectabusive teachers. Those views are not mutually exclusive. What we need is an accountability system. I am unequivocally against cutting teacher wages. I don’t want to criticize unions. I genuinely believe teachers are the foundation of a good society, and a strong educational system is central to empowering youth. In some senses, MSJHS was able to provide that enriching educational experience. In other senses, it severely lacked. I want to acknowledge that student experiences at my high school are non-uniform, and everyone has a different story to share. Yet, I feel that it is important to specifically highlight these incidents of abuse and demand that the school does better, because for many, the behaviors of just one teacher can taint an entire high school experience. I have no vendetta to execute, no “closure” to seek, no “peace” to make with anyone. Most of my peers would probably recall that I did conventionally well in school and was relatively well-liked by most teachers (including ones that I call out here). I even (regretfully) egged on the same culture I criticize here. I am writing this for the sole purpose of starting a community-wide discussion on how we can point MSJHS in the right direction and improve the high school experience for everyone, not just students that happen to be teacher’s favorites.

edit: I want to acknowledge that I take a very harsh tone in this discussion, because I feel it is absolutely necessary to get the right people to start listening to students. Students have complained “civilly” in the past, but it does not work. That does not mean I am endorsing cancelling or attacking certain teachers. The point is to hold them accountable. Again, this is a starting point for future conversations.

I secondly want to clarify the scope of my discussion on race. For those who don’t know, MSJHS is a high school where 92% of students are Asian-American (primarily East & South Asian), 5% of students are European/white, and roughly 2% of students are Hispanic, Black, or Native American. I don’t really think I speak for anybody, but I especially do not speak for Hispanic, Black, and Native American experiences at MSJHS and FUSD that I will never understand. I am specifically referencing racial tensions between a predominantly-white subculture amongst teachers and predominantly-Asian subculture amongst students, because that is the experience that I feel I have lived. Both groups also hold responsibility in the oppression of other minority groups. This situation is incredibly unique and I would not even necessarily generalize this experience to other Fremont schools.

With that said, I will list some anecdotes here. In my stories, I will not name nor gender teachers, but I will provide sufficient context so that students, alumni, and faculty of MSJHS know to what I am referring to:

In a world humanities course, my white teacher openly made aggressively racist comments. They constantly insinuated that America, Christianity, and Whiteness were superior to all else, which is extremely troubling for an educator that is supposed to help students learn about the broader world. They mocked LGBTQ+ students for their “unnatural tendencies,” repeatedly made disparaging comments to female students who wore hijabs or niqabs, and suggested that non-Western countries were uncivilized and “stuck in the old days.” We watched the Hindi film Lagaan, which discusses the history of British colonial rule in India, and they stated that India has become increasingly uncivilized ever since British rule ended. They ridiculed how India today has “poop and elephants” flooding the streets. They have never been to India. Several students complained to the school administration about his objectively racist comments, but no action was taken. They also once suggested that it would be “funny” if two autistic students took an exam together, because it would effectively be “as if one regular student was taking it!” I find it ridiculous that this person still teaches at MSJHS. The district clearly has a very wide tolerance for offensive, prejudiced teachers.

In another humanities course, a white teacher taught the text The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Twain, a white author, uses several racial slurs, including the n-word to discuss the historical context of racism in the novel. In discussing the novel, my teacher explicitly stated that students (including non-Black students) would be permitted to say the n-word (not substituting a euphemism or “n-word”) when reading passages from the text and/or analyzing them. We also watched a documentary that debated whether scholars (predominantly non-Black scholars) should be allowed to use the n-word for academic discussions. The idea was that by allowing students to say the n-word in a controlled, sheltered environment (a non-Black classroom), it was an opportunity for us to feel the “discomfort” surrounding the use of the word. Let me be very clear that I am not saying this teacher implemented this policy with explicitly malicious or anti-Black intent.I also want to doubly acknowledge that this teacher has a long history of activism, which many students are grateful to have learned from. Regardless, I don’t understand why such an anti-Black policy of selectively permitting non-Black students to say the n-word is allowed in the first place; the district should have zero tolerance for this. There seems to be a very intuitive causal link between students feeling like they can say the word in a high school class (without really directly considering the implications on Black people) and students feeling like they can say the word in day-to-day conversations. We could have easily discussed the text and racism without saying the n-word. Several other teachers at this school discuss race and anti-Blackness in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird (which also gratuitously uses racial language) but explicitly prohibit non-Black students from using the n-word. Many students in my class were visibly uncomfortable when other students said the n-word. There were no Black students in that class, but I can only imagine the degree of discomfort they would feel when a white teacher taught a class of predominantly non-Black individuals that there are circumstances in which they might be able use the n-word. Why are we teaching the narrative that white intellectual thought matters more than any other intellectual thought, that somehow the “academic necessity” to explicitly say the n-word in a high school course outweighs the terrifyingly racist history of the word? Many students (of color, but not Black) reported their discomfort to the administration, but apparently a white teacher’s preference supersedes. I also want to be clear that I am NOT questioning whether Huck Finn should be taught in schools (that is a separate debate altogether), but rather the mechanics by which non-Black people discuss the novel in class.

Another humanities teacher (who I did not personally have, but many of my peers did) used grades as a tool to directly bully students. They implemented a sort of “grammar hunger games” where pairs of students would peer-grade each other’s essays. Each student would start out with 7 points (the entirety of the essay score). If a student found a grammar mistake made by the other student, the student who caught the error would earn a point and the student who made the error would lose a point. That means with just 7 grammar errors (in quite long essays), students would be able to earn a 0 — other students could capitalize on this to earn 200%. This is clearly zero-sum academics. The teacher would also limit the total number of assignments, so each assignment would have huge (20–30%) impacts on student grades, and they would frequently score essays around the 50% mark. For some brief analysis, 50% of 30% is 15%; that means if students earned full credit (highly unlikely) on all other assignments, that upper-bounded their grade at 85%. The same teacher often verbally harassed students in essay feedback, was deeply favoritist, threw temper tantrums that involved crumpling up student essays without even reading them, ripping student papers in half, flipping tables (something a student would likely be suspended for), and more. If you disagreed with their viewpoints (which were often controversial and had prejudiced undertones), you would be subjected to even more harassment. This is clearly a traumatic and unsafe educational environment. Students often left that classroom crying. Several students have complained to the administration about these objectively abusive practices, but the school continues to endorse it.

In a physical education course, a pair of teachers (one of which was white) also verbally harassed students, fat-shamed students, and had clear favorites. Students were unfairly criticized for being “too academic” (code for Asian) and “embarrassingly unathletic” (code for not white). Once, one white teacher asked me and a group of peers to teach a seminar on yoga during a parent expo night — they thought it would be “cool” if my group could begin our session by saying “Namaste” (pronounced by them as Nahhh-mahhh-stay) and interpolating “spiritual” (Hindu) breathing exercises to make the exercise feel more “ethnic” and “authentic.” The word “Namaste” and yoga have nothing in common, other than the fact that white people should not feel empowered to talk so gratuitously about these ideas. It is incredibly racist, patronizing, and humiliating for a white person (particularly an authority figure) to ask me to do this for their personal fulfillment. I also find it ridiculous that this teacher disliked us for being “academically-minded” (again, code for “Asian”) but also then felt empowered to capitalize on students’ POC identities to help their class appear “authentic.” These same teachers would make students would often wait on the bleachers for 25–30 minutes (our classes lasted 50 minutes for context — that’s >50% of the period) past the attendance bell for teachers to come out of the locker room and start teaching their class. Often, the teachers would hold students past the end of class (making them late for their next class) to make up for the lost time that they were responsible for. Many students complained to the administration. One day, a class of students jokingly applauded when their teachers came out after nearly 30 minutes of waiting. Unsurprisingly, the teachers were incredibly upset and invited an administrator to bark at us for being “disrespectful” towards teachers. Students raised their hands to question whether they were truly at fault, but the administrator said “they would not be taking any comments” — pretty blatant silencing. It is hilariously unclear why there was never a discussion on whether the teachers were wasting the students’ time or providing an insufficient physical education. This is textbook gaslighting: the students were made to believe that somehow they were at fault for having teachers that didn’t care at all for their best interests.

In a math course, my (non-white; I do not want to conflate this teacher’s behavior with my discussion of racism) teacher had a policy where roughly 20% of student grades were based on “participation.” Participation was measured by how many problems on the whiteboard a student could solve within a period of time, generally a few weeks. To earn participation opportunities, students had to physically run to the whiteboard to be the first to solve the math problems. This policy is quite obviously ableist and dangerous; several students often collided into each other while running to the board or got physically hurt in the rat race. They also explicitly limited the total number of opportunities to get participation points so that certain students wouldn’t be able to meet their quarterly quota. At the same time, they enabled students who had already surpassed their quota to earn even more participation points, and rewarded their “extra participation” with brownie points and letters of recommendation. At the end of the semester, they always corrected students’ grades, so that not earning enough participation points would never hurt your grade too significantly. Yet, I wonder what was the need for creating such a stressful and competitive environment in the class in the first place. It did not contribute to my educational experience, but it certainly contributed to the teacher’s amusement at how his students would fight for opportunities. This teacher was very vocal about things like “mental health” and “student happiness,” and yet they chuckled and took joy in student misery, stress, and competition. There should be no place for this at our high school. I specifically recall that I did comparatively well in this course, as opposed to other courses I was taking at the same time, and yet, this teacher created a classroom atmosphere that made this course the most stressful by far. The teacher also had students do an end-of-the-year project, which essentially involved creating a large 3D sculpture and somehow relating that to math. The students that did the best were often the students that could spend the most money on art supplies and electronic trinkets. It contributed nothing to our education, but it made for a pretty “expo” at the end of the year where teachers could see all the “math” we had learned in our class. The cost to students? Incredible amounts of stress, unnecessary amounts of spending, and several all-nighters. This teacher was also incredibly biased and clearly had “favorite” students. They even explicitly named them sometimes. They also named students they disliked. I struggle to understand why this behavior is tolerated.

These stories are some of the ones that I personally can attest to, but I am certain there are more students with similar experiences. There are several more stories that have yet to be shared about teachers explicitly threatening students for criticism in the school newspaper, teachers being violently angry in class, and teachers telling students that they were worthless and fundamentally stupid. Most interestingly, the teachers who parodied our “obsession with academics” were the same teachers that had the strictest grading policies and weaponized academics to motivate and hurt students. These incidents collectively illustrate two key things:

First, MSJHS had a deep culture of racism. I know not all of the stories I brought up discuss race, but I absolutely think it is a big enough issue to call out. This is often hard to call out because a US minority group constitutes the majority population here, which creates the facade of Asian empowerment. Despite students being mainly East & South Asian, most of our teachers (particularly in the humanities) are white. This enables things like white teachers telling students when it’s okay to use the n-word, white teachers making racist comments about other countries, etc. We can (and should) address these incidents of injustice on a case-by-case basis, but the underlying problem is that MSJHS needs a more diverse teaching staff that can better understand the cultural backgrounds of its student body. Select (but enough to call out) white teachers at our school are failing students and improperly educating them, teaching us to often be shameful of our own and other non-white cultures. This is not to say that all white teachers nor that all white people are intrinsically bad; don’t mince my words. I have had several white teachers and mentors that have inspired me greatly, and yet, I truly believe there is a huge cultural disconnect between most of white teachers at our school and the predominantly Asian student body that contributes to abuse. That is problematic.

Second, MSJHS actively facilitated a culture of stress and competition and blamed this culture on our “Asian upbringing” or the “immigrant mentality.” It is true that many of the immigrant parents in our community prioritize education over most other things. That is because for many immigrants, education and career growth is an existential struggle. As non-white people, we struggle to assimilate into America and probably never will. Yet, tangible things like a “college degree” qualify us to white people. Our place in this country then looks “deserved” despite our otherness. Some white teachers would question why our high school was “so weird” and why we had a “strange obsession” with grades; that is quite honestly code for“Asians are unnecessarily aggressive.” This mentality unfairly villainizes Asian Americans for simply trying to reach the same baseline level of respect that white people have by birthright.All white teachers need to realize that we will never be seen as legitimate by most white people, unless we have the degrees, the jobs, the grades to prove it. They will never understand the racial discrimination that our parents (primarily first-generation immigrants) have faced, the extent of which almost demands this mentality. Many of our parents were only allowed to come to this country under an H1-B or student visa. The legitimacy of our presence here has always been tied to our productive, capitalist value to society. If you do not agree with this, consider how Asian Americans are comparatively unsuccessful in “unconventional” disciplines –– literature, film, music, sports, politics, etc. The lack of representation and inclusion in these kinds of careers is appalling. The “doctor, lawyer, engineer” stereotype is largely perpetuated because this country generally refuses to accept us if we strive to become anything else. Our school district mostly refuses to teach books written by non-white authors and yet, some white humanities teachers at MSJHS have the audacity to blame us for being scared to become Asian-American writers. I specify “Asian-American” because this country will never see us as just “writers.” Our color never goes away. Many of us feel pressured to do significantly more work to earn the right to exist in this country, something that white teachers earn simply by virtue of being born. That is why immigrant families are so adamant about education.

Even the idea of “intra-Asian-American competitiveness” is tied to anti-Asian sentiment. It is no secret that white people in power explicitly limit the number of opportunities for POCs to succeed, because they are terrified that we are taking their place in colleges, taking their jobs, and more. That arbitrary limitation contributes to the problematic narrative of Asians needing to be “better” than one another and other races; white people have conditioned us to worry that there are “not enough spots” for everyone. Many white teachers insinuated that we cared too much about school or were excessively-STEM focused (both of which are somewhat true), specifically because of our Asian-American upbringing and innate competitiveness (untrue). That is deflecting responsibility. There is a world where this level of ambition, this existential need to assert ourselves in this country can co-exist with student happiness. I firmly believe that more than 50% of the stress culture at MSJHS can be reduced if teachers were fundamentally more compassionate towards students. That especially involves ending a legacy of favoritism. There is an incredible pressure for students to get their teachers to like them. It is critical for grades, letters of recommendation, and more. Teachers actively know this. They know how much their approval matters to us. Still, they often pick certain students to harass throughout the school year, fully understanding the devastating psychological effects that this can have on student self-esteem. They are blatant about their “favorite” students, which is problematic because the non-“favorites” are then led to believe they are at an academic disadvantage, which causes stress. There is no need for absurd participation policies, zero-sum grading, extra credit opportunities that involve running a mile at 6AM, etc. These contribute nothing to our education, except they actively make students more and more stressed about their high school experience.

The worst part of the stress culture fostered by MSJHS is that the school faculty and administration actively deny their role in perpetuating it. During mental health assemblies, we had abstract conversations about how students were at fault for “not reaching out” when things got too hard. Students brought the topic up frequently, but nothing actionable at a school-wide level ever came out of it. They passed out rubber bracelets with the words “YOU MATTER” and wrote somewhat encouraging messages in chalk on the sidewalks, as if that was the most the school could do to better things. For four years, my white administration taught me to resent my immigrant parents for caring about my future and security in this country. We were taught that the academic priorities of our parents were the exclusive reason for our depression and frustration. And yet, the school allows select teachers to enforce academic policies that emphasize arbitrary favoritism and competition over student aptitude. And we wonder why so many kids graduate with anxiety, low self-esteem, and depression.

The question is then, why bring this up now? Why don’t students going through high school complain about these things? The truth is students do complain. A lot. The administration just doesn’t take any actionable steps. It’s always “go see your counselor” (who tended to be remarkably unhelpful) and never “let’s reconsider this teacher’s behavior.” Abusers taught at MSJHS and got away with a slap on the wrist. There is also the fear of retaliation from teachers, who hold a lot of power over students’ opportunities following high school. Many teachers have even publicly threatened harassment towards students that criticize them. It should also not be the student’s burden to fight against these incidents. The school should be proactive about prohibiting these harmful practices. To students, this style of education is all they’ve ever known. It’s so normalized and many teachers gaslight us into thinking that this is okay. After graduating, many students would even report that they were thankful for the rough experience, that our high school somehow toughened them, and now they would be better equipped to tackle the world. I had the same mentality. It took me two years of college and meeting people from around the country to realize that you could be “tough” and “successful” without needing to go through such an unbelievably taxing high school experience. Only when I met other “tough” people who had less troubling high school experiences did I realize that the narrative of “toughening” students is unfairly used to justify abuse. There is a reason that this high school has become internationally famous for being incredibly stressful and toxic, and it is not just the students. It has been a long process for me to realize that certain teaching practices at MSJ were not normal and incredibly problematic. In high school, I almost worshipped several of the teachers I mentioned here. Like many students, I openly praised them because I wanted good grades and reference letters. I am now ashamed to have ever been proud of these practices. I deeply regret that only now do I realize how damaging these behaviors were.

I’ve made a pretty extreme argument here, so I want to loop back and caveat a few things:

  1. I don’t want to characterize the MSJ student body as completely unproblematic.At an individual level, students contributed immensely to the stress culture (I was one of them) and created unnecessary stress, anxiety, and abuse for each other too. Our student body is also deeply racist (especially anti-Black), sexist, queerphobic (including students attacking queer teachers and teachers attacking queer students), transphobic, and classist, and it would be unfair the paint the brunt of the responsibility for discrimination at MSJ on teachers; students hold an equal responsibility here as well. Within us, there were so many weird social dynamics around popularity, who the “smart” people were, who the “cool” people were, non-Asian otherness, etc — things that I would argue most students (including myself) contributed to. There are also certainly student-body-specific issues that exist with paying for SAT/ACT prep, being unnecessarily unempathetic with one another, hiring private tutors, and more. I do not want to absolve the student body’s role (including my role) in perpetuating stress culture, discrimination, and abuse. We have a long way to go. My point here is to rather argue that one of the (main) reasons we were deeply unhappy as students was because of teachers that egged on a culture of competition and abuse.
  2. I do not want to characterize all teachers in this light — again, I had many good ones and many of them may end up reading this. I also don’t want to characterize all whiteteachers in this light for the same reason. I am introducing race into this discussion because I do think there is a cultural misunderstanding between many white teachers and Asian students at MSJ that contributes to stress. I also think there are a sufficient number of white teachers at this school that engage in this kind of behavior, which warrants us discussing it as a trend and not just specific stories. That said, I do invite all white educators that read this to not use this point to blanketly deny their role in upholding an oppressive system. Even if you are not explicitly racist, complicity (including passive tolerance of other racist teachers at this school) is nothing to be proud of either. I additionally want to acknowledge that POC teachers aren’t immune from abuse either, and often said very offensive things. My non-white science teacher said “You can study all day, but at the end, nothing,” a disheartening message for students who are trying to do well in a difficult class.
  3. Education is fundamentally hard. I don’t think any district gets it right. I have hand-wavingly assigned a lot of blame to teachers at MSJ here, but I do think that we must acknowledge the role of the administration for enabling this culture, the school district for not demanding better, voters at-large for not educating themselves thoroughly on this topic and caring enough, a broken policy system, and much more. My argument is that all of these components have worked together to facilitate an experience that uniquely enables certain teachers at MSJ to harass students, often with racial intent.
  4. I have barely scraped the surface on a hugenumber of issues here. My goal is not to fully explain racism, competition, and abuse at MSJ, but rather touch on one specific way in which they intersect and hurt students.

To teachers & faculty at MSJHS, I seriously ask you to reconsider your teaching practices. Re-evaluate if your style of teaching actually productively contributes to educating students, or if it is creating unnecessary competition. Your behavior is central to our growth; you have the potential to inspire us and ruin us. Failing a student might not sound like a big deal to you, but it can be incredibly damaging to students that fight tooth & nail just to gain your approval, when in reality they will never get it. Acknowledge the ways that you have contributed to stress culture, call your colleagues out, and find better practices. If I called you out here, I invite you to really reconsider whether these teaching policies help or hurt student mental health. Practically every alumnus I have talked to agrees that these incidents are extremelyproblematic and frankly unhelpful when it comes to the “real-world experience” that you preach. No matter your intent, the effect it has on students is undeniably negative. And before you get angry and defensive, consider why this had to be said in the first place. The blame should not be on me, nor other students, for “exposing” your behavior, but rather on you for practicing this culture of bullying in the first place. These are not one-off “accidents” that students should let slide out of good will; these are endemic practices that have actively harmed several students and need to be called out. If you do not wish to be held accountable for negative behavior, simply don’t engage with it.It is a disgrace that after several student suicides, the fundamental teaching style at MSJHS has barely changed. Do better. Stop blaming everything on “Asian parents.” And seriously, if you have a tendency to be excessively moody or snappy to the point of flipping tables in class, maybe reconsider the effect of your behavior on 13- to 18-year-old kids. These four years are one of the most formative experiences for students. They deserve better than to deal with constantly-moody teachers that bully and harass them. And perhaps favoritism is an inevitable problem with education, but even if you don’t like a student, it is up to you to set aside your anger and distaste, and treat them just as well as you treat your favorites. That is the role you signed up for when you chose to become an educator.

And before you get defensive, before you angrily question why I would take these issues to the public, ask yourselves why these issues exist in the first place. Students wouldn’t be so upset if you were compassionate. You wouldn’t have been called out if you were compassionate. Rethink who is truly at blame in this weird, toxic environment we’ve created.

To students & alumni, I invite you to reconsider the teachers that you “worship” or “like.” Think about all those times your favorite teacher bullied a student in your class, and what actually differentiates you from the victim of harassment. Think about whether you like teachers because they were genuinely good teachers, or if they just happened to favor you. Many teachers gaslight us into worshipping them (despite their problems) through a policy of favoritism. We need to break out of it and hold them accountable. I also invite you to understand that your experience with teachers at MSJHS is not representative of everyone’s experience. Just because a teacher inspired you or was nice to you, doesn’t mean they could have been incredibly psychologically damaging to another student. If you consider yourself to be anti-abuse, if you consider yourself an anti-racist, if you consider yourself a champion of mental health awareness, then the burden is on YOU to call out injustice WHEREVER you see it. You cannot claim to be against injustice, but then selectively allow it when teachers just happen to be nice to you. I am guilty of this too. Please realize that your good experience doesn’t invalidate others’ bad experiences, just as others’ bad experiences don’t invalidate your good experience. Teachers are human and they make mistakes; many times, we as students are incredibly mean and bully other students and teachers. Teachers can be good and bad. The point is not that we must “cancel” them, but that we need to stop settling for the “bad.” We need to stop allowing racist and/or abusive behavior just because a teacher can “teach a subject well” or is an “advocate for the right things.” We need to stop settling for a low bar and demand a lot better.

To parents, I really hope this letter has been eye-opening to you. Students often feel uncomfortable talking about things like this with their parents. I certainly did. It is fundamentally hard for a lot of us to open up. That does not mean that problems are not occurring. That does not mean that your students are happy at school. Check in with your kids, love them unconditionally, and demand that our administration does better. They are doing you a disservice by allowing select teachers to harass students. One of the key reasons that Fremont and the Mission San Jose area have such a high real estate value is because of our school district. Many parents chose to move to Fremont, as a literal investment in their children’s future; the pressure to go to “good schools” often arises from this. Many teachers do not understand this, nor the existential pressure to succeed, and constantly berate children for wanting to get good grades and “do well.” And to parents who are considering moving to Fremont for our school district, my honest (but individual) recommendation is: don’t. College admissions tell a pretty story, but that is only one sliver of the educational experience that the district provides. Your student will be equally as successful in other schools (even if they don’t get into “elite” colleges — they will be fine), and likely happier. Reconsider whether this culture of harassment and abuse is something that is productive for your child.

To the district and MSJHS administration, your handling of these issues has been unimpressive to say the least. I hope several students and parents become enraged about your complicity in creating a toxic, damaging culture in Fremont. The burden is on you to do better. It is imperative that the district audits the school (teachers and administrators), identifies every single instance of abuse, and comes up with explicit and uniformly-enforced policies to prevent this in the future. It is imperative that the district implements more robust diversity & inclusion training for faculty and students alike. It is imperative that the district reconsider its lackluster hiring practices in terms of diversity that perpetuate these problems. We need more diverse curricula, a functional accountability process, multiple school psychologists (not counselors; psychologists), and a lot more. There is no need to spend funds on a Thinker statue or decorative bricks in the ground when there are clearly much more pressing issues at play. That is negligence. If the district is unaware of these problems, that is equally as damning since they are clearly not listening to and centering students’ best interests.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge our privilege in having this discussion. We are privileged to even have the ability to attend high school in the first place. We are privileged to have some of the good teachers that do teach at MSJHS, when millions of children worldwide lack really basic access to education. Go fight the good fight for other communities that need more help (Black Lives Matter), but don’t simultaneously tolerate injustice in your own backyard. It is a disservice to the future students of FUSD.

I hope that this inspires individuals to reflect on their time at MSJ and question their own experiences. If you have a story you’d like to share, I would appreciate it if you reached out on FB or submitted something here (you can do this anonymously). I am not certain what the next steps are in terms of tangible reform, but I hope that we can start with an ongoing discussion about this and other issues.

This letter was first published on Medium by the author on July 4, 2020.