South Carroll High School Brings Students Together to Focus on Similarities, Not Differences for 'Unity Day'

“When everything's made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am,” sang Finn Dahl as he stood center stage Wednesday morning at South Carroll’s sixth annual "Unity Day."

The senior’s performance was one of many as students did their part to bring the school together and focus on celebrating similarities, not differences.

“High School aged students tend to get hung up on the differences between students instead of the similarities,” said South Carroll High School Principal Eric King. “The goal of Unity Week is to reverse that thinking and help our students to be prepared for the extremely diverse world they will be entering beyond South Carroll and Carroll County.”

"Unity Day" started at South Carroll in 2005 as a way to present various global cultures to students. Performers from around the world came to share their cultural history.

The event has since evolved from a day of presenting students with different world views, to an entire week about acceptance within the culture of the school.

“We want everyone to know that accepting people isn’t a negative thing,” said Jill Oswald, an English teacher and the Education That Is Multicultural representative for South Carroll who put on the assembly with the help of a small committee of students.

Oswald and her committee chose to focus this year’s assembly on sexual orientation and body image after realizing that this is what they hear most students teasing others about in the hallways. In response, they created an assembly that was an ongoing skit punctuated with songs and monologues.

In the skit the students acted out a “normal” classroom scene where no one stands up for each other and everyone gets taunted. A number of students left the classroom with hurt feelings.

Then the cast ran through the skit again. At first, the situation seemed identical but then the students began to stand up for one another and the entire scene changed. No one left the classroom upset or defeated.

The various monologues all had a similar message: it only takes one person to make a difference-- to stop bullying-- to take on the responsibility of being that "one."

The message of being "that one student" gave a new meaning to the shirts the students were wearing simply reading “one.” Each student was given the special shirts at previous Unity Days. The idea is that South Carroll is a body of one, but it only takes one person to make a difference. 

The assembly also featured many musical performances by South Carroll students including “Concrete Angel” by senior Jess Herche, “Iris” by senior Finn Dahl, and “Beautiful” by senior Floyd Jones.

English teacher Mike Hoover said after the assembly students participated in an advisory lesson with live models for positive and negative behavior coupled with the MSNBC footage of bullying programs.

The day, “engendered great discussion and enabled students to conscientiously fill out questionnaires on bullying in their own lives,” said Hoover. 

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