Since first learning about affirmative action in high school, I have often asked white college students if they approve of affirmative action. The most common response I have received is an ambiguous answer: The students usually support the idea of affirmative action but not the way it is practiced. I have also found that it depends on whether or not the college students I am asking got accepted to the college they wanted, because if not, the response is negative and the students may even blame affirmative action for not getting into the school they desired.

But affirmative action is not to blame for a white student’s rejection, nor is it to commend for a student of color’s admittance. First off, before a student’s race is even taken into account, the student in question is already in the top 10 percent of the applicant pool, meaning that any student accepted due to affirmative action policies is already highly qualified. From the surface, affirmative action policies give students of color an advantage; but if you dig deeper, you will notice that these policies do nothing to deconstruct the actual discrimination that those students have faced because of their race.

Whitman College is not an affirmative action institution. Rather, as its policy states, it is a non-discriminatory one. In other words, Whitman does not accept any student or employ any faculty or staff based on factors such as race. It is important to continue with the aims of affirmative action and to understand that non-discrimination policies can still empower students of color without antagonizing white students into feeling they are being cheated. Non-discrimination as an ideology that is practiced by both college admission officers and employers is better than affirmative action policies that only tokenize and objectify students of color.

The issue with affirmative action is that it sets a quota that colleges specifically have to abide by. This does not enable students of color, but rather turns us into a number that a college is required to fill. In contrast, a non-discrimination policy takes into consideration a student’s background as it affects his or her position in society. It is not that students of color deserve preferential treatment simply because of the color of their skin, but rather it is because students of color, regardless of socioeconomic status, face the challenge of overcoming stereotype threat that makes their application impressive.

When a student of color is as strong an applicant as a white student, the student of color should be accepted as a response to the years of oppression and discrimination that people of color have had to face in this country. The difference here is that this is a case-by-case basis and the reason for admitting the student of color would not be in order to fulfill a quota, but instead because the student of color has a perspective that is underrepresented in most college institutions today.

Some would refer to the previous as reverse discrimination, but if you look at the figures specific to Whitman, 76 percent of the newly admitted class is white, while only 2.9 percent is black and 7.4 percent is Hispanic. It is clear, then, that white students are still in the vast majority. So if students do not get into a school, it is not because of the color of their skin, but rather due to what experiences they may bring. Affirmative action policies are very limiting in that they target race as a factor that should determine admission, whereas non-discrimination policies take into account the plethora of experiences that a student may contribute.

Race is not as important as background is. That being said, because the majority of college students of color are first-generation, working class while the majority of white college students are middle to upper-middle class, race does seem to correlate to a specific background. Of course that is not a formula, which is why non-discrimination policies are more encompassing and fair than affirmative action policies that only look at physical characteristics such as race to make final admission decisions.

This is not to say that white students here at Whitman have not struggled at some point in their lives. But for students of color, statistics already show that we should expect to be the minority even though, combined, we are in fact the majority. Until this changes, we will need to rely on informed non-discriminatory policies to ensure that the undervalued and underprivileged have the same opportunities as those that have been privileged.

All throughout high school I volunteered in various service projects that served the New York City community. Some of these projects helped the elderly, while others helped inner city students like me. No matter the project, I remember feeling so empowered knowing that I had helped improve my community even if all I had done was paint a mural in a school that would bring smiles to the faces who saw it.

But to be honest, I did not get involved in service because I was naturally a good samaritan. No, I got involved in service because I had to: my high school required that each student complete at least 15 hours a year in order to graduate.  With the new HB 1412 bill that was just passed in the state of Washington, community service is now a graduation requirement statewide and will begin with the Class of 2017.

My high school made community service a requirement because they understood the important role that it plays in benefiting the local community and enriching one’s high school experience. Similarly, there are students who are in full support of this bill because they agree that servicing their communities has been fun and empowering for them. On the flip side, there are those who are not in support.

Those who opposed the bill claimed that service should come from a good intention, not because someone was forced to do so. In some ways, that could even be counter productive if a student goes into a service project with a negative attitude and an unwillingness to cooperate, affecting the progress of the project. But that is a risk worth taking.

For the most part, the majority of students when fulfilling the community service requirement will find that they enjoy giving back and being made to feel as if they made a difference. Perhaps like me, high school students will decide to take on service as a passion of theirs and pursue it as they go into college and even for the rest of their lives. But high schools should not be the only years where participation in community service is encouraged – service should be a fundamental component of every level of education.

At Whitman, we do not have a service requirement, but I think we should have more incentives for students to go out serve the Walla Walla community. There should be some way for a student to earn credit if they take part in a program or project on a routinely basis. Service not only benefits a local community, but it also increases a student’s ability to empathize, express compassion, and feel inspired to effect change. This bill is a stepping stone for what soon will hopefully be the norm – service as an integral part of a holistic education experience no matter the age.

Did a parent or adult in your household often put you down, insult you or humiliate you or act in a way that made you fear you might be physically harmed? If the answer is yes, then you have scored at least one point out of 10 on the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) test. If you were to keep taking the test and score anything above 0, you would be considered at risk of committing crimes, becoming addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, dropping out of school, etc.

For many students at Lincoln Alternative, ACEs have been a major part of their lives. But by focusing on addressing and dealing with ACEs as a way to help students stay in school, faculty at Lincoln have also helped students stay out of prison.

The school to prison pipeline is a recently discovered phenomenon in which students who attend poorly-funded public schools or come from impoverished backgrounds are more likely to fall through the cracks of the education system and end up in prison.

ACEs play a significant role in determining whether a student ends up in prison. Specifically, if a school does not help a student overcome his/her ACEs, then that student is far more likely to commit crime and be sent to prison for it.

Historically, students who misbehaved too much were sent to Lincoln Alternative. Lincoln has not infrequently served as a stepping stone in Walla Walla’s own school to prison pipeline, until a dramatic shift in disciplinary policy changed the way Lincoln approached its students.

It wasn’t until a few years ago, when then-new principal Jim Sporleder sought to find a way to reform Lincoln, that the idea of ACEs even became a part of the school vernacular. Jim had attended a psychology conference where he learned about adverse childhood experiences, and when he returned to Lincoln, was not so surprised to learn that many of the students score highly on the ACE tests.

The students who fall through the cracks of any public school system tend to have high ACE scores; their dropping out of school and ending up in prison is no coincidence. Many of their schools enforce “zero tolerance” policies where if you act out once, you are immediately suspended or expelled, depending on the severity of the act.

At Lincoln, however, if students skip class or get into a fight, they are more likely to meet with a counselor to figure out what may be happening at home that is affecting the way they are behaving at school. For many youth at Lincoln, they have parents who have been in and out of prison or adults in their household addicted to drugs, which does not set a positive example for them.

If a student goes to school but doesn’t feel that it is a safe space or if he or she feels unable to excel, then street crime and gang activity become increasingly appealing. The way to put a stopper to the school to prison pipeline is to adopt a motto similar to that of Lincoln’s, as well as find ways to keep students engaged in school. This is tricky at underfunded public schools because they do not have resources for the programs that could benefit students most.

However, it doesn’t cost anything to educate all teachers on ACEs. And there are ways to offer reduced programs such as creating a community garden where the students can work or starting a debate team. Addressing these ACEs head-on can help more completely address the problems that keep these students from succeeding in school, and put them too often in prison.

Anything that gives students purpose and makes them feel that even if no one at home cares or even if society expects them to fail, their teachers and school administrators do care and, in fact, know that they can succeed, will help students stay in school and out of prison.

Whitties come from all different walks of life, but what we all share in common is that we all had to endure standardized testing in order to get here. You remember that feeling in the months, weeks and days leading up to the test as you tried to use all the opportunities at your disposal to ensure you received the best score possible. Some of you may have been lucky enough to have hired tutors or others of you may have bought books and studied on your own.

Either way, if you are white, it did not matter what you did to prepare for the SAT or ACT, because from the outset you already had an advantage over students of color.

In theory, standardized tests are objective and non-discriminatory evaluations that can be used to assess a student’s ability to apply the skills that they have learned. However, because students of color consistently perform worse than their white counterparts due to differing processes of socialization and societal pressures, these tests have become a mere platform for white students to excel and exploit their privilege.

Recent studies have shown that “minorities” such as Hispanics and Blacks consistently perform worse than whites and “smart minorities” on basically all standardized tests, even after controlling for other factors such as socioeconomic status. Some reasons for this phenomenon include test questions that presuppose traditionally “white” or middle-class knowledge, especially in analogy questions. Another issue is that biased proctors are often suspicious of students of color. As a result, students of color feel pressure from white proctors that expect them to fail.

This fear of failure is known as stereotype threat and is one that bogs down students of color to the point where they actually do fail. Stereotype and experience convince many students of color that we will not excel scholastically, especially if their parents did not make it past high school. Capable students of color are so intimidated by the threat of perpetuating these stereotypes that they are almost paralyzed with jitters when taking these tests.

Consequently, their test scores negatively reflect this. In an experiment that demonstrated the effects of stereotype threat, identical test questions were given to whites and blacks. When the students were notified that their answers would not be scored, the effects of stereotype threat disappeared and black students performed just as well and at times better than their white counterparts.

Therefore, it is clear that standardized tests are not fair or accurate representations of a student’s scholastic propensity or intellect. Many education reformers have encouraged colleges to measure students based on portfolios, collections of tests, essays and other assessments that show overall improvement. Others advocate for elimination of standardized testing altogether.

Whitman itself cannot bridge the gap between students of color and white students in regard to high school standardized testing scores, but we can follow the lead of the other 775 schools in the country that are now test optional. Wake Forest is among those schools, and with that switch the percentage of undergraduate students of color enrolled increased from 18 to 23 percent.

If Whitman were to, at the very least, switch to being test optional, we could see a dramatic increase in the number of students of color present at this school. If we truly long for diversity like we claim, Whitman should take steps like these to correct for racially biased testing practices.

On Saturday, March 16I hopped on the Bolt bus headed to Portland for the Urban Education Spring Break Service Trip. Sitting on the bus, looking out of the window, I could not have predicted the impact that my experiences from the trip would have on my perceptions of education reform, and more importantly, of myself. The 12 of us, Whitman students from various grades, socio-economic statuses, racial backgrounds, religious views, and unique walks of life hopped on the Portland public transit everyday at 7 a.m. Our destination was Emerson charter school, but it was our journey rather than the service itself that made the trip so memorable.

In a nutshell, Emerson is a K-5 public charter school where the classes consist of two grade levels. For instance, in the K-1 classroom students have the experience of learning from the older students as well as of then teaching the younger students the next year. Emerson also believes in positive discipline, which means that the punishment fits the action and that the punishment is kind but firm. Lastly, Emerson is a project-based school, which means that students work exclusively on a project for about a month. For instance, a K-1 class’s project was shoes, which meant they went on various field trips to Nike or shoe shops and had guest speakers come to their class. At the end of the unit they had an open house where students had stations and presented on what they had learned.

The students at Emerson are taught what it means to take responsibility for one’s own actions. Because they believe that the city is their school, they are constantly interacting with the real outside world. Therefore, it is no surprise then that these children are so mature and articulate. To be honest, it was a privilege for me to sit in on their classes and class meetings because I learned so much about empathy and curiosity from them. The tight-knit Emerson community has had positive effects on the confidence and inquisitiveness of the students.

I would not say that Emerson is the model of a perfect school since students still experience problems such as bullying. In addition, since the school is predominantly white, middle-class, the students of color and their families admitted to feeling uncomfortable. However, when issues like these arose, the administration immediately did everything they could to address them, such as having discussions and coming up with solutions. If anything, the Emerson administration’s commitment to maintaing a positive and safe student experience is what all schools should constantly strive towards, including Whitman.

At the end of each day, we would return to the church we were staying in and have group discussions. Although I would also find myself engaging in thought-provoking conversations with other participants throughout the day. We all opened up and shared our experiences with and our opinions of the education system in this country, as well as other topics such as race, gender, sexuality, religion, mental illnesses, and class. I came into the trip having pre-conceived notions such as the biased opinion that charter schools are the future of education, but I am now walking away with an open mind to other possible solutions and perspectives.

During the trip we also volunteered at Northwest Children’s OutReach and Impact NorthWest. But even though we helped them, they did us a service by opening our minds and shifting our outlook on education and life. I can only speak for myself, but I know that I returned from this service trip with 11 new friends, knowledge about various education systems, and a firm belief that compassion and creativity are two key values that must integrated into the education reform movement in order to ensure that the movers and shakers of the future are caring and accountable individuals. If I had to describe my overall experience in three words, they would be as follows: inspiring, informative, and hopeful.

The middle school that I attended, KIPP Academy, occupied half a floor of a building that housed two other public schools. And even though the other kids joked that KIPP stood for “kids in prison program,” it was their hallways that resembled a prison and not ours. At KIPP, every single classroom was colored brightly and positive mantras such as “Knowledge Is Power” were written everywhere. I did not know it at the time, but the aesthetics of my learning space made learning fun and easier.

In high school, I volunteered with a program that painted murals and walls bright colors in public schools. That organization understood what not enough public schools in our country acknowledge: Aesthetically pleasing schools can make students happier, healthier and more inclined to go to school with a desire to learn. Because private schools can afford to have aesthetically pleasing campuses, the students there are already at an academic advantage as soon as they step foot onto their schools than those students at uninspiring public schools.

Aesthetics do matter and have a significant impact on the way we learn. An aesthetically pleasing school consists of outdoor spaces, maximum natural light coming into classrooms and hangout spaces, presence of nature inside the buildings and bright and colorful walls filled with art. All of these design features come together to create a school that fosters community and school spirit.

Studies have shown that bright and natural spaces lift people’s spirits. Many inner-city public schools resemble prisons with their bland-colored walls, classrooms that all look identical and even windows with bars on them. It is no wonder that these kinds of schools have the highest truancy rates, because no one likes to go to a school where they feel trapped and confined. Also, it is in dismal, asphalt spaces where bullying occurs at a higher rate than in places where the surroundings interact with one’s senses and make students feel more confident.

Schools re-designed with aesthetics in mind have seen improvements in their students’ academic success. Investigations have shown that students in classrooms with a lot of natural lighting learn up to 21 percent more than students in classrooms with less. If building new windows is not a possibility, then taking a class outside once in a while can be enough. The point of schools is that they should be places where learning can take place, but the reality is that a space that is both unappealing and uninteresting makes whatever is supposed to happen in that space seem like that, too. If any new public school is being built, aesthetics should be included in the budget in order to maximize student happiness and learning capacity.

Currently, aesthetics are not usually included in public schools’ budget. The idea is that function is what should matter and everything else that looks nice is simply a luxury. But that should not be the case. Function does not have to mean boring. It cannot be denied that most public schools simply cannot afford to repaint their walls when they may be struggling to buy books, but there are ways to bring a classroom alive on a tight budget: Students can come together to paint murals from paint donated by community members, students can work and learn in community gardens or teachers can have plants in classrooms and put up works of art to make drab walls look fab.

It is no wonder that Lincoln Alternative High School’s mascot is the phoenix. At Lincoln, the students and staff prove that from a sad and despairing place, someone stronger and brighter can rise. On Tuesday, Feb. 26 I attended a panel in which Principal Jim Sporleder, faculty, and a student from Lincoln spoke about their experiences. From this event I have come to believe that Lincoln’s healing rather than punishing approach to educating at-risk youth is the approach that all schools in this country need to take in order for more students to stay and learn in school.

Students at Lincoln Alternative have often been placed there due to truancy issues. When students stop going to classes at Wa-Hi, Lincoln becomes the alternative option. In the past, Lincoln was considered a kind of dumping ground where those students who misbehaved too much or showed a lack of interest in school were sent. Three years ago a determined Jim became principal of Lincoln and introduced his newfound vision. Now the entire faculty and student body at Lincoln have been steering the school in a new direction. Instead of punishing students, faculty seek to rehabilitate them. For instance, if a student were to say “F**k you!” to a teacher in a regular public school, they would immediately be suspended or have disciplinary action taken against them. However, at Lincoln, the teachers and principal instead ask the student, “What’s going on in your life right now?” in order to assess where the root of the problem is coming from.

For many students they have never been asked how they are doing or what’s going on in their lives. A lot of the students at Lincoln have or are currently undergoing adverse childhood experiences, or ACE’s for short. And it is as a result from ACE’s that students’ performance at school is negatively affected. If you are homeless or have to take on an adult role because your parents are addicted to drugs, it is difficult to focus in school and it is much easier to feel angry and frustrated. The faculty at Lincoln understand the impacts that ACE’s have on their students, which is why they are so patient and understanding. With the recent addition of a health center, Lincoln has now been able to offer mental and physical aid to those students in need, and as research has shown, this has made a huge difference in the personal, social, and academic life of the students.

The number of suspensions has gone down dramatically since Jim and the Lincoln faculty have adopted this new compassionate approach to education and discipline. But not only have suspensions gone down because they no longer believe in immediately suspending students, but the amount of referrals have gone down as student attendance has inversely gone up.  This means that more students are showing up to school and acting out less. Lincoln is seeing a dramatic shift in the way that the students are participating in class and opening up more. Knowing that the health center is free and that it and the school itself are safe spaces makes students eager to go to school.

Lincoln has become a home where students can be themselves and not be harmed or judged in any way. For many students the neighborhoods or the places in life they come from are turbulent and unpredictable, but when they walk into the doors of Lincoln they can be sure to expect a safe and supportive atmosphere. There are so many students falling through the cracks of our education system because our educators are not taking the moment to inquire why a student may be misbehaving or not showing up to class. If our educators were to simply pause and try to understand what the troubled student may be going through, then we may very well see the power that healing has in restoring intellectual curiosity and motivating all students to want to learn.

In the previous election, Washington’s Proposition 1240, the initiative introducing 40 public charter schools to Washington State over the next five years, was ratified by only a .38 percent margin. This concerns me. Having attended a charter school, I personally understand the significant benefits that charter schools have for low-income, working class children and communities.

Regardless of whether you voted “yes” or “no,” the presence of charter schools in Washington State means that disadvantaged students will now have the opportunity to receive a private school education at the public school price, and that a model that is proven to work may ultimately motivate the public school system to change the things that clearly haven’t been working.

Charter schools will positively impact communities and make headway on closing the achievement gap in Washington State. In California, public schools that converted to charter schools saw an average of 17 to 25 percent growth in the proficiency of their students in math and English, as determined by standardized testing, in just a few years.

Although public schools in Washington are not necessarily converting to charter schools, it is important to note that charter schools are publicly managed and funded mostly by nonprofit organizations, which means that money will not be taken away from local public schools in order to allow space for charter schools.

Parents choose to put their children into private school because these schools are constantly improving. The staff always seeks to be up-to-date with the latest technologies or learning techniques. Charter schools are like private schools in the way that parents, teachers and students provide their input on how the school should run. However, charter schools are not like private schools because they are absolutely free. Before, the privilege to decide on a school was reserved for those who had the economic means to do so, but with the existence of charter schools, working class families have the opportunity to ensure that their children receive the best education possible.

Charter schools are also equally available to everyone, although they oftentimes turn to lotteries in order to fairly provide students the opportunity to enroll. In 2010 it was reported that only 33 percent of fourth graders and 36 percent of eighth graders enrolled in public schools received “proficiency” or higher on standardized tests. Clearly, there is a need to reform the current public school education model as it stands. Part of the problem is that public schools are limited in the kind of major changes they can make because the process is extremely bureaucratic and laborious.

Charter schools are the perfect solution to offering immediate aid to those students who are not benefitting from the public school system. It is not fair that those without certain means are left behind because of a system that is too slow to change. Charter schools show public schools that providing an excellent education to all students should be a rule and not an exception.

I went to high school with Gossip Girl, and as the series suggests, she also made my life quite difficult. Nestled comfortably in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the Nightingale-Bamford School, costing almost as much as a Whitman education, loomed over me five days a week for four years. From the moment I stepped foot into the austere brick building, I was assaulted by the prestige left behind by the Nightingale alumna and author of Gossip Girl, as well as by the hundreds of privileged girls who comfortably inhabited their schoolhouse. Upon graduating I realized that I never did feel fully part of the community even though I did make wonderful friends, and the teachers left lasting impressions on me. I guess the gap that separated the upper class white girls and me was so pervasive that I never felt close to them. I remember struggling academically my first year even though I had previously attended the rigorous charter school KIPP Academy. At KIPP I had learned that knowledge is power and power is freedom and that I want it. Well up until Nightingale I knew that I wanted it, I just didn’t know at what price.

It was at Nightingale that I first realized there was such a thing as an achievement gap between students of different social classes and/or races. It was so tangible, that all I had to do was watch my classmates hire private tutors while I went home and took practice tests and revised my own college essays. But the gap between my classmates and me went beyond the classroom. I remember returning from summer breaks and listening to other girls talk about their luxurious summer vacations while I sat there knowing I had spent that entire summer working. Feeling like a penguin in the sahara made it difficult for me to believe that I could overcome my disadvantage. Luckily, through the support of my family and teachers who believed in me, I was able to bridge that gap.

Now at Whitman, I do what I can to contribute to the education reform movement. In 2006 I was featured in the New York Times article “What It Takes to Make a Student” (I am in that first picture, on the left in black). I don’t share this to indulge you in my two seconds of fame, but rather, for you to understand that I was part of the education reform movement before I even knew how to add big numbers. At KIPP, I was taught to believe that if I worked hard and was nice, then I could go to college even if no one in my family had. I was taught to rely on myself because I knew that society would not make it easy for me to move up the social ladder. For many Whitties the question asked by family and friends was probably, “Which college will you be going to?” Whereas for those of us who are first-generation, working-class students, we had to ask ourselves, “Will we go to college?” I know that had it not been for KIPP’s college program KIPP Through College, many of us KIPPsters would not be in college now. The reality is that like me, not many first generation students can make it to college without the help of an ally or a program.

Which is where you and I come in. As students who have made it to college, it is imperative that we do what we can to help others get here too. Acquiring a higher education is sadly a privilege that for too many is difficult to obtain. It does not have to be this way. By just being aware of the achievement gap that exists in this country, we are that much closer to closing it. Research and share your findings about education reform with your friends and family. Hopefully, once you become knowledgable of the issue, you will feel inspired to do something about it. Join Teach for America. Tutor at a local public school, or become a college coach.  At Whitman, we claim that diversity of perspectives and backgrounds are so vital to enriching our lives, but at times I feel like I am surrounded by people who take for granted the premier education being given to them at this elite institution.  The only way we can hear the voices of those who have struggled to get here is if we listen. It all starts by just looking around and minding the gap.