Council for Unity-- A Lesson in Character Education
 
Students work together to keep RHS a peaceful learning environment for all of the school’s students.

With diversity often comes division. Riverhead High School has worked hard this year to erase lines of demarcation and division among its student body and to strive for unity. A new organization called the Council for Unity is one outgrowth of this effort to achieve student unity.

With enrollment at its highest level ever and with the threat of organized gang movement from Nassau into Suffolk County, RHS principal John Merone started looking for a way to prevent the threat of gang activity and violence from claiming any of his students or spilling over into the school. (See February 4, 2004 Newsday Article on GANGS ON LONG ISLAND.)

“We don’t ignore our problems. We will do everything we can to provide our children and our staff with a safe environment,” relays Mr. Merone.

Character Education, Peer Mediation, RHS PRIDE, assemblies and the Council for Unity are all efforts at keeping the high school a safe haven for learning. The RHS Council is modeled after The National Council for Unity, a nonprofit group founded in 1975.

At the high school level, the Council brings representatives from every ethnic, racial and natural grouping of students together to learn how they can collectively and individually work for unity at their school. They meet after school for 45 minutes every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to follow a curriculum that helps them learn how to listen to and respect one another’s point of view.

The Council at RHS meets in a small room in the upper library of the high school to discuss a unit of the national curriculum. The discussions center on why people join groups, how peer pressure works within a group, and how that pressure impacts high school kids in general and themselves in particular. National organizer Robert DeSena is an occasional, but very important, participant in the group. In addition to white hats and t-shirts, Mr. DeSenna brings with him honesty and a sense of the history of the national group that keeps the RHS Council vital and focused on their mission of unity within their own school.

Earlier in the year, Council helped sponsor a reception for an assembly entitled, “Breaking the Cycle” that brought together police officers, community leaders and State Assemblywoman Pat Acompora on stage with NYC Det. Steven MacDonald, who had been attacked and paralyzed by a group of teens in Central Park, and writer John Christoph Arnold. Det. MacDonald and Mr. Arnold addressed student violence and how to stop it. Through their supportive presence on stage, student members of the school’s new Council for Unity gave voice to their own message of unity, respect for each individual in the midst of diversity and the importance of sustaining peace in this their place of learning. When necessary, members take a stand in their respective groups for mutual respect.

“I like Council because it brings all the students together without looking at only our ethnic backgrounds,” shares Council member Quadrae Mims.

Lasheena Harris, nodded in agreement, “It makes us all for one and gives us a peaceful place to learn.”

Seniors Mike R, and Jessee M., who are also both mediators in the school’s Peer Mediation program, see the Council for Unity as a natural extension of their peer mediation work. The school had over 25 mediations in the first third of the year according to advisor, Lisa Donato.

“I would like to help the community and the school come together,” states Jessee, who plans to major in communications at Five Towns College. “Some students come to school and feel separated from the other students. I’d like to help them feel they’re part of the community.”

Juniors Micahel Parada and Mario Puluc see the Council as a place for them to make friends with kids from all kinds of backgrounds.

“It’s a fun group of students,” states Mario.

“It works,” states Theresa Drozd, the school’s K-12 Violence and Drug Prevention Specialist. “Just a couple of months into the school year, there was an incident in gym class where a Hispanic student felt slighted. It caused some tension. We brought the parties together with the Council and they helped talk it out and settle the dispute. Just recently, two of the Council members, who were butting heads last year in the cafeteria, met together to talk about Council with an interested adult, and they were there together as friends.”

The biggest testament to unity in a high school is often in the hallways as students pass between classes. It’s no coincidence, that there are a lot more handshakes in the hallways these days between all sizes and colors of hands.