When administrators follow a strong denunciation of the hateful act with efforts to involve students, faculty, staff and the community in examining tensions underlying the incident, the denunciation becomes a unifying call to action. In secondary schools, no factor is more important to success than student involvement in suggesting and implementing solutions. After carrying out the appropriate steps in the previous sections, schools can steer toward unification through the following steps:
• Prepare a detailed summary of events (see also Model Incident Recap). By the second or third day, you should be able to include more details than you covered in your first response statement. Describe what happened, why the incident was unacceptable, how the school has responded thus far, and how it will involve students, parents and the community in resolving underlying problems. Include the time and date, within the next week, of an evening meeting for all interested persons.
• Encourage open discussion. At the emergency faculty/staff meeting, distribute the incident recap and invite comment. Ask teachers to read or distribute the incident recap to all students during the first period. If possible, open classroom dialogues on the incident and related issues. Have students write down their suggestions for preventing further incidents and promoting respect, and collect the suggestions. Ask students to take the incident recap home and discuss it with their parents. Remind everyone of the upcoming meeting for parents and community members. Give the incident recap to reporters, post it on the school or community Web site, read it at the open meeting, and consider offering to read and discuss it on a call-in radio show.
• Make counseling available for students and staff. Some may want more time to discuss what has happened, individually or in small groups. Others may want to talk about fears related to acute or chronic bias issues. Make sure that school counselors maintain comprehensive, up-to-date resources and referral information.
• Give students a leadership role. Invite a student group that reflects campus diversity to compile proposed solutions submitted by students during classroom discussions, then select, prioritize and implement the best suggestions. If no such group exists, sponsor one (see also Encourage Student Activism). Encourage the student leadership group to report its progress regularly to students.
Missouri associate professor and former superintendent.