Lila Daoudi ’24, Cole Hall ’24, Ella Jacobs ’24, Sabine Kang ’24 and Nilufer Mistry Sheasby ’24 will serve as Co-Chairs for Student Leaders for Inclusion, Diversity and Equality (SLIDE) for the 2023-2024 school year.

Visual Arts Teacher and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Coordinator Reb Limerick said each new SLIDE Co-Chair is dedicated to making positive change.

“To have new Co-Chairs each year is a challenge, but a reality,” Limerick said. “It’s the natural cycle of high school leadership [as] students move on to bigger and better things. Each year there is a fresh dynamic, a new diverse group of incredibly motivated and visionary students, who set out to make change together. Even though they may be new to the SLIDE Co-Chair role, each student is selected because of their previous DEI-focused leadership experiences and thus is ready to take on the elevated responsibility.”

Limerick said she wants SLIDE to play a more public and active role in organizing events.

“Next year, a goal I have is for SLIDE to be more well-known within our school community,” Limerick said. “Oftentimes, SLIDE makes things happen behind the scenes – planning a diverse and engaging WinterFest this year for instance – but I hope for our public presence to become more felt next year, and for SLIDE Co-Chairs to be widely known by their peers as positive changemakers.”

Daoudi said she aims to make SLIDE more involved with other affinity groups.

“I just want to get more inner-SLIDE involvement between different affinity groups,” Daoudi said. “I recently got the ball rolling for the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) therapists to come to campus, [so] I just think a lot more support projects or other celebrations would be pretty cool.”

Latin American and Hispanic Student Organization (LAHSO) Co-Leader Omar Rivera ’24 said he wants SLIDE to improve communication with the administration and to act as a more effective liaison between the school’s affinity groups.

“I think that by sending LAHSO representatives to SLIDE meetings, we make ourselves heard, but I think that there should be stronger communication between SLIDE and Ms. Jones,” Rivera said “In the past, she has led SLIDE meetings and heard us, but we are left with no action. This is an opinion that resonates with most affinity club leaders and this has been something we have been struggling with this whole year. SLIDE is only the mediator between the students and the administration, but if the administration isn’t paying attention, then there is no point.”

Kang said they often see a lack of diversity and representation in the school’s curriculum and want SLIDE to help address that issue.

“I do think the curriculum is something that, in almost every subject, or every humanities subject, is something that can be expanded to be just slightly more inclusive and slightly more aware [and] more modern,” Kang said. “A specific thing that I would like to bring up to Ms. Jones or Mx. Limerick this year, is that the Korean American Parents’ Association (KAPA) has been trying for years, as far as I know, to get Korean included as a language. I think the administration has sort of pushed back on that saying that [there’s] not enough people will take the class, which I think is just false.”