Five students and three faculty members attended a diversity conference held in Houston, Texas from Dec. 5-8.

This is the second time in five years that Harvard-Westlake students have attended the annual conference.

The three-day intensive program educated students and faculty about the different forms of diversity and seven social identifiers.

Key topics were religion, ethnicity, socioeconomic level, gender, race, age and sexual orientation issues.

The attendees of the conference also discussed why society functions the way it does as well as “[providing] a safe space for networking for people, who, by virtue of their race or ethnicity, comprise a form of diversity termed ‘people of color’ in independent schools,” according to their website.

The students also split into affinity groups at the conference, by race, for smaller discussions.

At the conference, the keynote speaker spoke about the little things that matter in life.

“Throughout the conference, I thought about what she said.” Mazelle Etessami ’14 said. “I realized that the little things affect the big things, more than I had taken into account. The little steps, the daily encounters, really matter.”