Harmony Devoe is a Harwood Union High School student working with the Underground Workshop, a network of student journalists across Vermont partnering with Community News Service.
“The other week me and my friends were just talking and hanging around, and a neighbor called the cops on us, and they put us in cuffs,” said Zachaya Berry, a 9th grader at Harwood Union High School in Moretown. The person who called the police said he and his friends had weapons, so the police patted them down. Berry did not have a parent present.
Berry, who is Black, says he has experienced a multitude of racist incidents. Berry has primarily grown up in Vermont, but he has also lived in Chicago.
Berry said the police stationed at his former school in Chicago did not make him feel uncomfortable.
“If I got in trouble with them, they would just walk me nicely, and not grab or hold onto me,” he said.
Berry said he does not feel the same way about most police in Vermont. When he and his friends were biking in Barre, a city police officer stopped Berry, but none of his friends. Berry was the only person of color in the group.
Berry has also experienced racism at school. When he experiences direct racism from students, he reports it. He said that students sometimes get in trouble for a day or two, but they do not stop. According to Berry, the consequences applied at schools do not succeed at getting students to change their behavior.
Megan McDonough, a co-principal at Harwood Union High School for about three years, would not speak specifically about the issues raised by Berry but acknowledged the school’s system for dealing with such matters has not been as effective as it might be.
“It is not effective because, one, not everyone is aware. Two, not everyone is comfortable reporting these things,” McDonough said.
“In the handbook, there are identified people in the building to go to to report racism, hazing, or bullying,” McDonough said. “It’s one thing to have a handbook, but how do you articulate that on a day-to-day basis?”
Berry described one instance where his school’s disciplinary system did not work.
“In 7th grade, a kid told me to ‘go pick my cotton,’” Berry said. “So, I beat him up … and I got in more trouble than him.”
This year, when Berry was walking in the hall, a white student he had gotten in a fight with was in front of him.
“The hall monitor thought I was following [the student], which I wasn’t, so now I need an escort in the halls,” he said. If the student is in the hallway with Berry, he needs to be at least 10 feet away from the student. The student has had no similar rules or consequences.
McDonough spoke on how incidents of racism are dealt with at Harwood.
“It very much depends on the details of the situation. The outcomes range from suspension to detention to community service to work with a restorative coordinator,” McDonough said.
“Our justice system reflects that just consequences without teaching doesn’t help,” she added. “I believe education is much more powerful than just consequences.”
Berry has also witnessed his friends of color experience racism at school.
“One of my friends got in trouble for leaving class just to go to the bathroom,” he said. “A group of people were going. Only the one [student] of color got stopped by a hall monitor.”
Berry said that his ability to access education has been directly impacted by racism.
One day, Berry was taken out of science class and to the office. His science teacher said she felt threatened by him. He said he does not know why. When he was in the office, he was told that he could not continue going to science class or another class taught by the same teacher for the rest of the school year.
“I’m in four study halls right now,” he said. He is unsure about how he is going to meet Harwood’s graduation requirements, even though his grades are passing.
He believes that a white student carrying out the same actions would not get the same kinds of consequences.
“My mom feels the same way too,” he said. “She’s emailed back but it’s something she can’t do anything about.”
Berry has also switched his math class, because in his past math class, he “wouldn’t get as much help as the white students.”
Harwood has been trying to provide anti-racist education for the staff in an effort to provide more support for BIPOC students.
“The staff are having professional teaching on how to be anti-racist, and this work is always ongoing,” McDonough said. She also acknowledged that “there is always so much more to do.”
Another issue at Harwood is the lack of diversity.
“In most of my classes I’m the only student of color,” Berry said. “My mom looked up how many people were of color [at Harwood], and about 6% of the students are of color [according to U.S. News]. My mom wants me to change to U-32.” According to Andrea Knepper, U-32 has a reputation for having many safe spaces for BIPOC.
Knepper, an Asian-American teacher who has experienced racism at Harwood as well, said she is striving to create a space like this at Harwood. Starting this year, she has made her classroom a BIPOC affinity space during a free period every other Monday. Students come to share, listen, learn and have snacks.
On Nov. 8, Knepper and two of the students in the BIPOC affinity space attended a Zoom conference for VSARN (the Vermont Student Anti-Racism Network). VSARN shared the results of a survey they conducted about racism in Vermont schools. According to members of the BIPOC affinity space, these results were both angering and accurate.
“Sometimes it’s easy to make excuses for other people’s actions, even though we experience these microaggressions all the time,” Knepper said. “It’s hard to be like ‘this is what happened, this is how it is, and we need to do something about it,’ but we have to.”