You are a sixteen-year-old student attending a private high school. Your school continually holds mandatory meetings in which students are separated according to identity categories: there are "all girls' meetings," "all boys' meetings," and meetings for students of various races. You are offended by this. What are your rights? And what moral, philosophical, or legal recourse might you have?

Comments are wide open and welcome.

I think you have the right to find another school. Not sure there is much beyond that except perhaps to raise your voice to ask "why" and point out what you think is wrong with their program.

"All boys" and "All girls" I can understand (assuming the separation is relevant, as in gym class), but "All Short Red-Headed Scotsmen" is probably carrying things too far.

From the hypothetical 16-year-old student's position, there's probably not a lot to do, other than talk to other students, or a supportive counsellor. Is she in a Joan of Arc mold?

Being private, the school may not be bound by Federal guidelines.

It's distressing that this should even come up.

For a private school, she probably has no legal recourse (unless she can argue violation of contract..if it was not clear that the school would have such policies in place when she signed up and paid her tuition, maybe an argument of misrepresentation could be made. But I'm not a lawyer).

Morally and philosophically, it seems to me that she has the right to attempt to organize other students and faculty against this policy, and also to contact alumni regarding the matter.

Interesting question. Is there a policy reason underlying this? I guess my thinking might be contingent on that.

I went to an Eastern, co-ed prep school. At the time the boys campus and girls campus (and dorms) were separated so it was natural to have separate meetings.

We also had mandatory sex ed. Some topics were discussed with boys and girls together and some were separate.

We did not have separate meetings by race but given the then very low minority enrollment the administration did take steps to help relieve the possible feelings of isolation by having facilitating 'rap groups. (Horrid word - but it was current back then.) Sometimes the grous met by themselves, sometimes in a broader setting to exchange feelings, etc.

It was a Protestant school so the Jewish students had a Friday night prayer group and the Catholic students had (voluntary) RC services.

This does not sound like what is happening at the hypothetical school.

How do students feel about it would be another question. How about the other faculty.

Not sure what else to think yet.
Best, Ivan

Since you're going to a private school, it has the property rights to divide students by group identity or to impose dress restrictions or speech codes. You have the right to find another school.

You might try to organize, rabble-rouse, and monkey-wrench students and non-tenured faculty to protest the school policies. Buy why bother? Why would a freedom oriented student want to continue at a collectivist-minded school?

Of course, if you were going to a publicly funded school you might have standing to sue under civil rights statutes.

Since you're going to a private school, it has the property rights to divide students by group identity or to impose dress restrictions or speech codes. You have the right to find another school.

You might try to organize, rabble-rouse, and monkey-wrench students and non-tenured faculty to protest the school policies. Buy why bother? Why would a freedom oriented student want to continue at a collectivist-minded school?

Of course, if you were going to a publicly funded school you might have standing to sue under civil rights statutes.

I doubt there is any recourse. If your parents insist on you going to that particular school no matter how much you dislike it because of mandatory meetings or teachers and/or classmates who suck or whatever, the only recourse you actually might have is to do a runner and to take care of yourself at some place where they wouldn't find you.

But somehow I've difficulty believing that this would be a "recourse."

Erin, why did you write these with an apostophe:

"all girls' meetings," "all boys' meetings," ??

Would it have been more or less objectionable had had they divided them into discussion groups according to whether their last names start with A-L or M-Z?

YOu get likeminded friends to attend the "other" meetings. If it's an all Asian meeting, you show up and claim a Korean great-grandmother. Same with Hispanic. (Bet there's no all-White meetings). Let them prove you're not that ethnicity.

Yeah, Kate, that'll show them. Damned yellow menace, holding secret meetings. I bet when that white kid shows up lying about his Korean great-grandmother, he'll find the situation to be like *Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom*. Secret human ritual sacrifices. Nazis. And exotic foods, like chilled monkey brains.

Oppressed white folk must rise up against their oppressors! All you have left to lose is your Izod shirts and Michael Bolton recordings!

Ultimately, this hypothetical is like a screen. It's so vague that folks is just projecting their own fears onto the situation. But of course, the hypothetical offers no real details. What's going down at these meetings? Is it some stupid but benign multicultural thing: "All Koreans must meet in lovely Klansman Hall to watch Jacky Kang's *The Gingko Bed* and eat BBQ pork." Is it some insidious PC brain-washing: "You are Korean. You are Korean. Hate whitey. Hate whitey. Power to the people." Or is it that damned Temple of Doom: "Om nu Shiva, om nu Shiva om nu Shiva" until the victim's heart is in the hands of the priest?

If the meetings were voluntary, I believe it wouldn't be much of an issue, either at a public or a private school. Mandatory genter- or race-based meetings in a public-school context would violate a student's associative rights under the First Amendment, but as others have pointed out, private schools don't have to respect the Bill of Rights. And yet I assume the school has an ethical or contractual obligation to inform parents that their children are being forced to identify and associate in these ways? After all, such meetings might force students to make uncomfortable choices. Does a transgendered student attend the boys' or girls' meeting (or both)? If a student is one quarter black, one quarter Hispanic, one quarter white, and one quarter Asian, which ethnic meeting does s/he attend?

Is the issue of the student being forced to go to "group consciousness" meetings, or of being excluded from other groups' meetings?

I think, frankly, at a private school there's no recourse. The options as I see them are 1. transfer. 2. Suck it up. or 3. Do a little civil disobedience and either show up to meetings you're not invited to (and bring friends) or blow off the meetings you're "supposed" to attend by virtue of your group identity.

(I have to admit I would have been far more ticked, as a high schooler, to have been told, "Oh, you're a mix of Irish and German. You need to attend the Irish-German Students' Association meetings every third Thursday" than to be told "The Korean students have a club and they have private meetings, and since you're not Korean, you can't go.")

I will say that when I was in private school, if there were special Korean-only or African American-only or Greek Orthodox Students-only meetings, my inclination would have been to have gone to my friends who fit into those categories and gone "ha, ha, you have to go to a meeting I don't have to go to."

But then, I was a little snot in high school some times.

I may be a little confused by this one.

What is the purpose of the meetings and what is discussed at the meetings? At what point in the process are you getting offended - when it is announced? when you have attended a meeting and you are offended by what is discussed at the meeting? at the idea of there being these various mandatory meetings at all? What is the attitude of the other students about the meetings? Are they supportive of the meetings and what they accomplish and are you the odd one out when it comes to this?

There are just too many variables to this. How is this any different really from the PC speech codes in a way? This student is trying to make it seem that the school is forcing the differences when it might in fact be the other students who want the differences in order to discuss particular situations and in that case you are at the wrong school. It might, alternatively, be a means of the school to push racial differences in which you are right to be offended. How can we from the outside make the choice without actually having a lot more information as to what the meetings are about and what the makeup of the school student body is and even what the purpose of the school is? From the situation as posted we do not know if this is a private school for students with social or educational problems or a private school for the rich and advantaged class.

This is a hypothetical question so I will hypothesize that I have given an intriguing and thought provoking response to the post.

Seriously it depends. Are students being asked to meet separately for the annual black and white ball (a black organized event in a community which I lived, but to which everyone was invited) or to further racial differences? A non racist society is not one which suppresses race and cultural differences but one which is flexible enough to embrace them.

What is the moral, philosophical, legal basis for the "offense" being taken?

Is there arrogance involved?
Is there immmaturity involved?
Is there hyperselfsensitivity involved?
Does this person like to pick ideoligical fights over nothing?