On November 6, like any other Monday, the third and fifth through twelfth grades shuffled into the auditorium, anticipating the presentation of another Morning Ex. While the Parker community is accustomed to presentations on a variety of topics ranging from entertainment, like faculty improv, to political issues, such as the Israel-Palestine conflict, they were unaware that they would be talking about this particular Morning Ex for months to come.  And that just over two months after the MX, Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Dina Levi would, in an email to the community, announce her resignation.

The recently formed White Affinity Group, led by upper school history and social studies teacher Jeanne Barr and eighth grade English teacher David Fuder, shared stories of what their white identity has meant to them. Accompanying Barr and Fuder on stage were senior Emma Stein, school nurse Anne Nelson, and lower and intermediate school technology facilitator Ryan Hurnevich.

According to Principal Dan Frank, the MX focused on the “topic of race as part of the school’s comprehensive commitment to educate for diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Barr and Fuder had been asked by the administration, Barr said recently, to start an affinity group for white students. In that group, they discussed “how to make the community more aware of issues of white racial identity, and at Parker we have a long-standing tradition of using Morning Ex as a forum for that sort of thing.”

Some of the stories shared included Barr’s about her transition from an all-white elementary school to a diverse high school and Stein’s about the first time that she became aware of her white identity.

Following the MX, many upper school advisories held discussions that were intended to allow students to respond to and ask questions about its content.  Advisers were prepared for these discussions with an email, sent the previous Friday, from Dina Levi.  The email included an explanation of the MX and a series of sample questions that might be posed to advisees in discussion.  

Upper school english teacher and Department Co-Chair Theresa Collins said that she did not feel adequately prepared to have these types of discussions with her advisory. “Faculty received an email about the White Affinity Group Morning Ex the Friday before at about 5:15 p.m,” she said. “The notion that teachers at the high school level would then have enough time to prepare for a conversation just a few days later in an advisory where maybe they had talked about the topic before or maybe they hadn’t was a really tough sell for me.”

According to Barr, the intended message of the MX was to publicize their new group and raise awareness of whiteness as a racial identity. She believes that MX can be an effective tool to inform the community about various clubs and groups and to invite students who are interested to join and let others know that if they are not interested, that is okay too.

Her group, she said, was committed to anti-racism education.  “The purpose of a white affinity group is anything but advancing patterns of discrimination,” she said. “In fact, it is about specifically confronting and disrupting these patterns. We need to raise the consciousness of white people that they have a role to play in ending racism and that doing so should not rest solely on the shoulders of people of color.”

Levi believes that there were many problems with the MX.  She said, “It was clear that the audience didn’t come away with the intended message.”

The venue, Barr said, was not right.  “In retrospect,” she said, “we can see that the MX was, in fact, not a great forum for that.”

Junior Leigh Logan took issue with the MX’s impact on people of color.  “The MX came across as an isolation from the students of color,” Logan said. “It wasn’t addressed to the students or faculty of color, yet we all were forced to sit there and endure it. Some of the anecdotes of the speakers felt condescending.”

In the discussions after the MX, Levi said, “hurt came from students of color hearing white students make very hurtful remarks.”

Much of the tension in these discussions, in Barr’s view, was the result of unpreparedness. “We didn’t have an articulated plan in all the advisories for how this was to be discussed,” she said. “Some advisories didn’t address it at all, and others encountered hurtful and surprising ways the discussion were brought up. Feelings were hurt, and I feel the pain of those who had to endure these remarks that were really hurtful, and I regret my role in causing that because that was not what I intended.”

It wasn’t the intent or content of the MX that was the problem, according to Collins, but the setting. “There’s no question in my mind that those stories are really important stories for them to think about and for each of us as individuals to think about,” Collins said.  “I believe, however, that those stories are best shared in spaces where there’s been a building of community.”

There also wasn’t the correct audience for the presentation, Collins said. The audience members, ranging from eight year olds to adults, had too wide a range of experiences. A more appropriate setting, according to Collins, would have been an environment with smaller groups such as specific classroom discussions and the affinity groups themselves.

Stein agrees with Collins that the content of the MX wasn’t the problem, but to her the biggest issue was the lack of preparation and coordination afterwards. “I haven’t heard a lot of bad feedback about the content of the MX, but I have heard a lot about the aftermath,” she said.  “No one really knew that it was coming, and nothing organized was done afterwards. I am really upset about this because I was not aware that there would be a lack of support for the students and teachers who participated in the MX and that there would be a stand-off of sorts in the community.”

The controversial Morning Ex wasn’t just discussed within the Parker community, but also outside its walls.  “It was painful to try to defend the school’s ‘character,’” Parker parent Evonne Taylor said, “to the many outsiders that heard about it.”

According to Head of Upper School Peter Neissa, the school decided after the MX to put a pause on programming related to race. “We needed to actually figure out if these discussions were the right approach, if this was the way we wanted to go about it,” he said. “What we were trying to do was put everything in order, to make sure that it was appropriate.”

Some find this pause in discussions about race confusing. “There’s been a big uncovering of something that hasn’t been talked about in a while, and it’s been met with anger,” Stein said. “So the school has drawn back a lot, and now it’s glazing over it.”

Students weren’t the only ones who had a strong response to the MX. “There seems to be a lack of trust, whether between students, faculty, or administration,” Assistant Principal Ruth Jurgensen said, “and we need to work on building trust and managing civility among the entire school.”

Levi described a similar tension. “The faculty was very polarized,” she said. “Some people thought the Morning Ex was horrific, and other people loved it.”

This tension was evident in the first Upper School division meeting following the Morning Ex. “In that first meeting there was really a clearing of the air kind of experience where folks were, in a very raw way, processing their reactions to the Morning Ex,” Collins said. “That was a difficult meeting to be a part of because everyone has an emotional response to things like this, and those responses were being shared.”

The first step now, Collins said, is for the adults themselves to work on race.  “As an adult community, we have a lot to do in our own conversations around race and identity before we can even think to begin bringing them to our wider audience,” Collins said. “We have to figure out where we are in our own path of identity development regarding race before we can do anything large scale ever again.”

One thing a number of faculty members agreed on was that the MX could have been handled better. “I think the forum of the MX was way more problematic than we anticipated,” Barr said. “We as presenters thought of ourselves as merely presenters and not facilitators. Our plan was that we would facilitate within the group meetings, but simply raising a topic as loaded as this required a lot more than just this presentation.”

The effects of the Morning Ex were felt throughout the entire Parker community–not just by the students or faculty. “Their attempt to fully understand exactly what happened, and the subsequent fallout delayed their ability to communicate with the parents, which caused more hurt,” Taylor said. “I think the administration did do a good job of allowing the parents to voice their concern once they completed their investigation. They realized that we have a lot of work to do and that we need to begin again more intelligently.”

Taylor also recognized that the hurt was not just felt by the African-American members of the community. “After I heard painful stories from mixed-race families and families with adopted children, I realized how deeply everyone in the community was affected,” Taylor said. “I grieved for everyone, even those on the stage.”

The administration is hard at work contemplating what next steps should be taken in order to repair the hurt and to address the community’s future needs. According to Neissa, the entire administration team has been discussing a strategic plan with regard to how to proceed with talking about race.  The team is asking questions about who should be in charge of these discussions and how they should be led.  Jurgensen said, “Now we are in planning mode about how to handle this going forward.”

Collins sees something like consensus about the MX itself.  “I’d say that there’s a pretty good sense that the Morning Ex was a mistake,” Collins said. “It wasn’t the right setting, it wasn’t the right place, it wasn’t the right time, and there’s just a collective sense of ‘I wish we could do it over again.’”

The next steps are less clear, though Collins sees opportunity.  “I heard this phrase recently: ‘Never waste a crisis,’” Collins said. “People are thinking about how to turn this into a real learning experience, which I believe will definitely benefit our community going forward.”