Commitment to Diversity
"The Hawk Eye" editor team poses in Austin after winning a Bronze Star at the ILPC Spring Convention in 2024. Our editor team, much like our staff and wider school, comes from a multitude of different backgrounds, ethnicities and financial situations we write about in the publication.
Hebron High School is about as diverse as a high school can be. Our demographics fluctuate from 15% to 30%, with no specific group being more involved in the school than others. Our theater productions cast a wide array of races, and our band’s leadership staff is full of people of color. Students don’t get turned away on account of ethnicity, sexuality or gender — everyone is equal.
This is a mission that never really felt like a mission to me. It’s always just been life. We live in a diverse community of different economic levels, so to hear someone was different than me just felt natural.
This is a mission, however, that I knew I needed to uphold as I got into high school.
The world feels like a much different place when you’re old enough to understand it. As I began finding stories in my community, I learned that, sometimes, diversity can exist and still be undercovered. That’s why I sought out the hard stories — I aimed to tell every truth I could find, regardless of who it comes from. If a journalist truly wants to be honest and fair, then they have to be committed to diversity. This is how I am.
Representing My Community
While it is important to make sure that you surround yourself with and fill your staff with a diverse set of opinions, it is also crucial that you share them. Through my writing, I try to cover as many different types of stories and identities as possible. My community is full of all types of people of every age; they all have a story to tell, and telling those stories --- representing my community --- is what a commitment to diversity means to me.
February 29, 2024 -- Best of SNO
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This story was one I struggled with,
but something I felt weighing heavy
on my heart when I first overheard
the angle. An acquaintance of mine
was telling a friend about what the
"R" and ring around her neck meant:
engagement.
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Obviously, a junior in high school being engaged is not something you hear every day.
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But there was more to it, too. Junior Alissa Petty had been in and out of school all year, and it was a noticeable enough thing that I knew there was more to her story than just being engaged. So when we sat down and I asked her about fiancé, and the interview went hours longer than I expected as we dove into her darkest moments, I knew that this story could help prove to somebody going through the exact same things she struggled with that it gets better. She was living proof of that.
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This story shows the diversity of our school for more than just covering someone who is LGBTQ+ --- it shows someone struggling. That is where I lay most of the diversity I can cover: someone who struggled and made it through, no matter what struggle it was.
Dec. 13, 2024 -- Best of SNO
Representing my community is
done most easily through feature stories; after all, I can tell the story of someone in my community and how
they overcame struggles. While this
doesn't make features any less important, it does make that specific goal a lot harder in news. ​
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Most of the time, that's because there's not a whole lot of diversity in a school event. When I found out that the district was looking into retiring five elementary schools, I knew immediately that, not only did this story have to get covered, every aspect of it did.
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The school board held a listening tour before deciding what to do, of which I attended. There, dozens of parents spoke out about the specific elementary school in our feeder pattern about a wide variety of issues. When the school board eventually did make their decision, I knew it was crucial to represent the diversity in the matter: the school board needed to save money, but the parents felt betrayed and worried.
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Each decision --- especially the important ones --- come with those for it and against it. As journalists, it's crucial to share that diversity in every article.
May 23, 2024
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One lesson stuck out to me about the
trip to San Antonio my junior year for
the TAJE convention: you can't
always cover the winners.
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While, in theory, a story about
someone who has achieved a large
amounts of success is interesting, it gets repetitive. There are no highs and lows. So, though I have long forgotten what class I learned it in, that's why I try to do what I learned in San Antonio: look for the losers, and wait until they win.
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Then-junior Grant Koch's story was simple: he loved what he does and didn't give up until he made it. But among the reoccurring cast members nailing lead after lead, his role stuck out like a sore thumb. That's why I wanted to cover him --- everyone knew that the stars loved what they did, but no one knew Grant's story.
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My commitment to diversity is one to stories like his --- the ones overlooked, the ones pitched that I had to beg my feature editor to give me a chance on. I understood when I wrote it that the angle was a gamble; Grant could be like almost any other Hebron student who loved what he did and would never do it again after graduation. But I sat down with him, praying that his story was unique, and was rewarded by hearing just how much his character, Buddy Layman, meant to him.
Dec. 17, 2024 --- Best of SNO
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If I'm being honest, I never intended
to write about senior Kezia Sunil.
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She sat at my table in AP
Government; until this story, most of
our conversations revolved around
helping each other with
assignments. A few times, it would stray to extracurriculars. One of those rare instances, as I sat brainstorming a feature pitch, she told me how awful it was being one of the few girls in robotics.
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I don't know if my eyes quite lit up, but I do know that I leaned closer to her and asked, "What do you mean?"
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Being at a school as diverse as Hebron, it's incredibly easy to look past that diversity. Kezia had fought against a 30-1 ratio all her life due to her involvement in the male-dominated field of computer science; sitting across from her day after day, I had no clue of the story. Neither did most people.
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Stories and identities can be found anywhere --- that's why it's our jobs as journalists to tell as many as we can. Kezia fought against the same stereotypes other students might've been facing, and telling that story is part of my commitment to making every students --- including those struggling --- know they are not alone.
May 7, 2024
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When I'm doing any work for Plano
Magazine, I never quite know what
I'm walking into. Though I specialize
in writing features for the publication,
features range anywhere from a
restaurant in the area to a community
member who just won an award. ​
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Walking into my interview with Plano ISD teacher Angelica-Jasmine Bates, all I knew was that she had just won Miss DFW and that she taught ASL to high school students. What I would come to learn was that she loved ASL because of her commitment to volunteering with the deaf community, and that she wanted to invest in each of her students because of a high school teacher who invested in her. I'd come to learn that Plano, the "rich city" in DFW, had a teacher that struggled with food and housing insecurity and made it to the other side. I'd come to learn that the face of our community struggled with things I could never imagine.
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When I saw the topic "Commitment to diversity," this was the first story I thought of because this was the one that showed true diversity through adversity. It showed that, no matter one's background, skin color or gender, struggling is not eternal. If there's one thing I knew when writing this article, it was that someone needed to hear that message.
June 28, 2024
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I've always had a soft spot for charity
work. It was a mindset I was raised
with: you work hard, save up, then
give it all back. I've spent 100 hours
volunteering at food pantries or
childcare events every year. So when
my editor told me about this specific pitch, I was immediately all in.
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The storehouse's mission is clear: educate the community that there is poverty within it, and help get rid of that poverty. Most of the time, that mission gets achieved by dozens of shifts every week full of volunteers helping pass out food and clothes to those who need.
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To Nancy Kurkowski, it meant telling the stories of the people she had come across.
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This story represents my commitment to diversity because I shared hers --- I learned about the woman who learned about her community. Diversity is something all around us, and by telling the stories of those who tell stories, I can not only educate readers about a volunteer in our area, but I can draw more attention to a book aimed to make a difference.
Diversity in Coverage: Hawks Uncovered
Diversity doesn't just mean diversity in what you cover; sometimes, it means changing the format for how you cover each story.
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"Hawks Uncovered" first came about because I wanted to cover Janitor Maria Arriaga and the language barrier presented an issue. She knew just enough English to hold a conversation and give me scattered quotes, but it wasn't substantial to write a feature. That did not mean she had no story.
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After the first "Hawks Uncovered," though, we were left with a deficit. What other stories could we cover in that style?
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We found our answer in the tedious stories that we always do. Every Homecoming queen and king deserves to have their story told, but the annual features were getting repetitive. Other students and teachers in our school had stories and fun facts that were interesting enough to cover but left the last few transitions of a full-length feature sparse for new information. Brights were already something we encouraged reporters to do, but they were done rarely. Hawks uncovered gave us a new outlet to tell more stories and add more diversity to our coverage style.
Like I mentioned above, this was the original "Hawks Uncovered." I rarely saw students chatting with her like they would any other campus job. Most were like me: completely unaware of her story.
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I didn't quite know what "Hawks Uncovered" would become, but I focused on how she got to the point she was at now. Everyone knew she was a janitor --- I wanted to tell them the "why."
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That's what "Hawks Uncovered" became when my editor at the time and I sat down to discuss the story. It worked this time, but we needed to figure out what worked best as a "Hawks Uncovered," as opposed to a regular feature. Soon, the format became a way to tell stories that had passed --- a journey of how someone got to where they are today.
Sometimes, a person can't be summed up easily.
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That's been the struggle my staff and I have had since I joined: trying to tell complete stories without the room to put everything a person does into the story. By telling senior Kizzy Debarah's many stories in one through a "Hawks Uncovered," I was able to combine it all without making the story drag on.
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Diversity means covering the little things. It also means trying to find ways to cover the little things with a fresh set of eyes. Kizzy's story might not be one that brings a tear to your eyes, but it is one that deserved to be told. This format gave me the ability to do so quickly without the article feeling too scrappy.
Trying to cover junior Carys Sherer was tricky, the same way it often is for any feature about someone's hobby.
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Her website wasn't necessarily groundbreaking, nor was it a huge hit on social media. However, it was unique, and her story was one that deserved to be told.
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Carys crafted a website designed to help teenagers share their political ideologies and opinions with the world. She had always been involved in the media; she wanted others to share the feeling.
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Using the "Hawks Uncovered" formula allowed me to share her story quickly; it would not stretch out over five quotes and five transitions and it could get boring in a regular feature style. "Hawks Uncovered" allowed me to share another story in a new way.
Every year, we cover the Homecoming queen and king. And every year, the stories fall flat.
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It is the same thing over and over again: she dreamed about this since she was a little girl and that dream came true.
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That was the case with Senior Layla Thompson; that did not mean it was her story.
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Through focusing on the "why" and "how" of how Thompson got to the nominations, I could tell a story that brought her to life beyond the sash she got given the week before.
It was a story we had to cover as the school newspaper, but the diversity in how we covered it allowed it to stand out among the past few years.
Leading With Commitment
Writing with the idea of diversity in mind means making sure that you're telling as many stories as possible. But there's more that goes into living with a commitment to diversity than just stories --- that's why I try my best to make sure that every opinion at Hebron is shared, on and off the page. Here's how I do it.
Equal Coverage
Equal coverage is something our staff has always struggled with. In theory, we know what to do: make sure every sport or club is getting an appropriate level of coverage depending on the amount of games and events they hold.
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In practice, this gets much more difficult.
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Trying to foster diversity means trying to let a diverse staff work on what they're passionate about; this system does not cover every single club and sport on campus.
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This is why we tried to implement sports beats. While we had a fair share of athletes in the publication, the majority of people attracted to newspaper fall on the nerdier side of the spectrum -- myself heavily included. To remedy this lack of sports coverage, we implemented sports beats to require each reporter to cover at least one sport a year.
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Not only did this foster growth in our reporter's journalistic skills and interests, it also boosted our sports section to be just as filled as our news and feature section --- sometimes more.
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Equal coverage is never going to be perfect, but by trying to make sure every sport --- and clubs, which I monitor to make sure coverage doesn't fall behind --- gets an appropriate amount of stories. Hebron is home to a diverse set of opinions and interests; if the newspaper is not catering to that in an equal proportion, then we have failed at our job to represent our community, and, therefore, our diversity.
Personal Stories
Personal stories have always been a point of struggle for me; it's never that I didn't want to share, it's that I never felt I had a story worth sharing.
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My peers, however, did not have the same problem.
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When I first joined "The Hawk Eye," our opinion section was filled with topical column after topical column. Very rarely did anyone try to tell their own story and leave a message --- it was always an attack on something currently going on.
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My editor-in-chief my sophomore year sought to remedy this, and brought the editor team along with her on the journey. At conventions, we all went to specialized writing courses about being vulnerable, trying to figure out how to foster a community where anyone would feel comfortable sharing their own story and giving them the means to do so.
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This quest has not been easy, but we've pushed through. When choosing the editor team the past two years, the personal aspect of writing is always one of the most important parts of finding an opinion editor. If one cannot be vulnerable in their own writing, it is much harder for them to ask others to do this.
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That is why I have worked hard on sharing the stories I do have and sitting down with reporters to gush over their bravery for sharing their own tales. Diversity is something we can cover by highlighting the people in our schools, but making sure the personal stories, identities and opinions of those on our staff get heard is crucial to my commitment to diversity.
Outside Experiences
I have learned more about being a journalist than I could dream of from my adviser, teachers and past editors. However, that doesn't mean the journalism classroom is the only place I've learned to be a good journalist, and it certainty isn't true when it comes to being an editor.
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Trying to lead a diverse staff means learning to work with a diverse group of people. Nothing taught me this lesson better than working at Chick-Fil-A on Plano Parkway. On staff, the majority of reporters and editors are the role model for every student: they get high grades in AP classes and work after-school to afford what their scholarships won't pay. At Chick-Fil-A, the story has a lot more variation.
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When I first started working there, I did so under the assumption that everyone was going to be like me: a Christian with good grades and high expectations --- it's the "Chick-Fil-A look" I had been described to by those who hired me. But that wasn't always the case. Some of my coworkers worked full time to give their children a future, and other's worked for any chance at a childhood. College was something of importance to almost everyone my age --- this is a fact that comes from the competitive community of DFW --- but it was not the standard.
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Befriending my shifts was no problem, but trying to lead them could be difficult. We all shared the same passions and, to certain extents, the same goals. That did not mean we all worked the same.
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I had always responded best to being told expectations and being rewarded for going above and beyond; some people needed rewards for scraping the bare minimum. That's OK. As I grew in position to become the youngest manager at the location, I had to learn that leading didn't always mean getting things done up to my standards. Instead, it meant looking at where people were and planning on how to get them further.
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I took this understanding back to my staff with a steadier hope. I was more similar to a lot of them --- that part remains true --- but I spotted our differences and tweaked my leadership style depending on the person. I want to foster a community where everyone is involved, which means going out of my way to talk to those who didn't have a lot of friends in the class, even when my best friends all crowded together across the room. I want to make Room 1315 feel like a home, which means trying to keep judgements out of my mind and working with reporters to hone their craft.
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Diversity to me means a thousand different things, but it all comes back to the same simple principle: having variety in everything you do. In terms of leadership, my outside experiences have not only let me see a diverse set of leadership styles, but have also given me the chance to foster more diversity inside my own staff.