The high school held its annual Day of Racial Reform and Solidarity (DoRRS) on Tuesday, Jan. 28, nearly two months after its originally planned date of Dec. 3, 2024. The day went forward despite postponement, debates over its format and controversy surrounding one of its student speakers.

DoRRS—a day dedicated to exploring topics related to race and racism through lessons, guest speakers and student speeches—is one in a series of the high school’s other “Days of,” including the Day of Dialogue (devoted to LGBTQ+ issues), Day of Change (devoted to combatting rape culture) and Day of Disability Education.

The Day

The event spanned four blocks that featured exclusively in-class activities: C-block, where students watched and then discussed a pre-recorded conversation of faculty discussing their racial identities; B-block, which featured guest speaker Yasmin Cader, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Deputy Legal Director and Director of its Trone Center for Justice and Equality; and D- and F-blocks—the “Telling Our Stories” portions—which featured nine pre-recorded videos of student speeches. In the words of Head of School Anthony Meyer, the day centered on “race, racism and antiracist practices and what progress looks like in our community and country.”

D-block and F-block speakers included Yijin, Micaela, Marcus, Arya, Ella, Christina, Shanti, Hashem and Melanie. The Cypress has chosen to refer to all speakers only by their first names in order to ensure their safety, per the recommendation of DoRRS organizers.

In her speech, Micaela remembered her surprise when she attempted to get a Spanish-speaking friend of hers into a Spanish class. “The response I got was: ‘Hispanic people shouldn’t really take Spanish classes,’” she said.

“Speaking your native language is more than basic communication. It’s about being able to connect with your culture and continue growing your identity and self-discovery, different than just learning a skill,” Micaela said.

Recalling the fear she had felt asking her mother about her family’s Kurdish heritage in fifth grade, Arya described a sense of disconnection with her ancestry.

“The hand of a ghost far into my lineage pulled me out of that deep slumber of ignorance. And when you wake up, the sun does not talk to you as it would in a dream. It burns you. And worst of all, makes you age,” Arya said. “Bushy brows burrowed and deep frown lines settled into my young face when I woke up to the racism and xenophobia that [had] followed me back into reality.”

Arya also addressed the racism she has been subjected to in her schooling.

“My experience in Brookline has consisted of a plethora of microaggressions that have compounded into this odd and truly venomous anger towards my community,” she said, noting times when those around her invalidated her Kurdish and Asian identity.

Ella pointed out an inconsistency she noticed among community members about racism in Brookline.

“I’m not going to pretend that this town or this state or this country is perfect when it comes to diversity like the rest of my fellow classmates and teachers seem to be able to do. But it’s good, better than most, and I’ve heard many—many—use that as an excuse for not addressing the interwoven societal biases we have,” she said.

“We talk about race as if there’s something bigger hiding right beneath the surface. And when someone tries to speak about it, they get silenced with excuses and the thought that they should just ‘reframe their thinking,’” she said.

Melanie encouraged peers to see beyond racial constructs and prioritize emotions and humanity when interacting with other students. She said listeners should “See them for who they are, not who you think they are.”

“Don’t be complacent. Because, at the end of the day, racism isn’t a passive battle. It’s an active one that takes checking your blind spots for stereotypes constantly to make space for new perceptions in a world that demands complacency. So, lock in, or someone will be hit and hurt by our complacency,” Melanie said.

Shanti spoke of her family’s Jewish and Sri Lankan-South Indian roots and about her experience spending fourth grade with her family in Bangalore. She said she has embraced the complexities of her lived experience.

“If you ask me where my family is from, I’m likely to say, ‘It’s complicated.’ But over my life with this complex background, I have grown to love it,” Shanti said. “I can take pride in the fact that my history is unique to me and that I am the perfect representation of my own past.”

The School Committee Meeting

This year’s DoRRS came with a backdrop of controversy and contention surrounding one Palestinian and Lebanese-American student speaker’s speech. During a Brookline School Committee (BSC) meeting on Nov. 14, many parents and community members spoke of fears that the student’s speech, which had not yet been recorded, would be antisemitic and not properly vetted by staff. This was based in part on a social media post from the Boston Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSL) that showed the student speaking at a pro-Palestinian protest in early September, where he made statements that some perceive as antisemitic and anti-Israel. The video was used by the Boston PSL to advertise a future rally planned for Oct. 6 “marking one year of genocide, one year of resistance”.

The 53-second clip, which contains multiple cuts, shows the student speaking to a group of supporters in a Boston park. The full transcript of the video reads as follows:

“I know how revolutions are started, and this is the start of a revolution.

“I am a Palestinian and Lebanese student that goes to Brookline High School. We are currently demanding for a free Palestine and a free Lebanon and a free Middle East—free of U.S. imperialism.

“In Lebanon, I was a part of the revolution, and I have been there with the country and seen it bleed and seen it suffer, and given it my heart while I have moved here. So I know how revolutions are started, and this is the start of a revolution [replayed].

“This has given me so much hope for the future and so much hope that, in our lifetime, we will see a free Palestine.

“[With crowd] Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide, you are funding genocide.”

Before the BSC meeting, an email titled “CALL TO ACTION: Preventing Antisemitic Speech at Brookline High School” had been sent to some community members, urging them to speak out against the student during the meeting. The email contained quotes from the social media video of the student and a guide to craft public comment remarks with a page-long list of possible talking points.

In an interview with The Cypress after DoRRS, the student, who has requested to remain anonymous, said that while he stood by his words and had given consent for Boston PSL to cut parts of his protest speech for the advertisement, he “found it strange” that opponents had used words he said at the protest to argue against his speaking at DoRRS.

He said that any speech he would give at the high school would “have a very different kind of vernacular and wordage” compared to what he would use at a protest or rally.

The organizers of the effort against the student’s speech had also sent a letter to Meyer and Superintendent Dr. Linus Guillory on Nov. 10, requesting administrators to remove the speech from the event, provide “concrete, written guidance to all student speakers and faculty advisors in an effort to depoliticize speech” and secure an external, non-faculty reviewer for all “Telling Our Stories” speeches.

During the BSC meeting, Nirit Friedlander, a Newton resident and co-chair of the Massachusetts Israeli-American Civic Action Network, unaffiliated with the Public Schools of Brookline, used the student speaker’s full name despite moderators’ repeated requests to keep the minor’s identity anonymous for his safety.

“In a public meeting, adult after adult from our school, neighbor after neighbor demonized and dehumanized me,” the student reflected on the BSC meeting in his speech at DoRRS two months later. “These words and actions have had a profound impact on my sense of safety and security in expressing my identity as well as my pain.”

To learn more about what was said at the BSC meeting, visit this document, where The Cypress has timestamped and categorized speeches by their content.

One week after the BSC meeting, Meyer announced in an email that the administration had postponed DoRRS to January of 2025 due to “the need to engage in further risk assessment with school and district leaders as well as our Brookline Police partners” and “the need to clarify the purpose of our DoRRS program.” Meyer wrote that the student being “inappropriately named in a disparaging and accusatory manner” was a source of heightened safety concern.

At the following BSC meeting, chair Andy Liu expressed regret about how the Nov. 14 meeting had played out. He said he supported Meyer and the high school administration in their handling of the event.

“Many of these speakers were part of an organized effort to pressure our staff and silence one of our students. And as chair, I just have to say that I’m sorry that our public comment period was misused in this way,” Liu said. “And I’m especially sorry that what happened here contributed to an atmosphere where BHS leadership had to worry that if the event went ahead, they wouldn’t be able to keep people safe.”

According to Lindsay Davis, a DoRRS organizer and Spanish teacher who was involved in the postponement decision, the safety of the named student and other student speakers was a large point of consideration by administrators and organizers when choosing whether to postpone DoRRS. Another aspect to consider was finding time to do “PR work” with the community, such as explaining why the high school holds “Days of” and what they entail, Davis said.

In December of 2023, during the previous DoRRS, similar controversy over a “Telling Our Stories” speech made waves among community members, including many staff and faculty, after a student went off script and alluded to the war in Gaza in his speech. Some, including the Brookline Coalition Against Antisemitism, argued that the speech was inaccurate and deeply harmful to Jewish and Israeli students.

Due in part to the speech and the community’s reaction, organizers decided to pre-record all “Telling Our Stories” speeches this year in an effort to facilitate safety and encourage educated, classroom-based discussions. The decision sparked a broader debate around the power of a live speech and whether high school faculty and students are ready to have conversations about certain topics, especially the war in Gaza.

In an email sent to students on Jan. 27, the day before DoRRS, Meyer defended the importance of hearing and discussing different points of view during “Days of.”

“There may be some schools where students only hear repeated, sanitized opinions that never challenge beliefs. There may be some schools that only hold events guaranteed to not offend anyone and therefore say little or nothing,” he wrote in the email. “The ‘Days of’ events continue the long tradition of Brookline High School learning that pushes students, challenges students, provokes students and sometimes even angers students. In other words, it is part of our long tradition of educating students.”

Meyer did not respond to requests for comment.

In his speech, the student said the lead-up to DoRRS had, in part, contributed to a realization that he had to “dilute” his identity to be tolerated within his Brookline and high school community.

“My identity and national symbols are considered offensive, my culture of freedom are denounced as distressing calls for genocide,” the student said. “Here, my security and dignity are too often sacrificed for the comfort of others.”

The Empty Seats

According to Assistant Head of School Hal Mason, a typical January school day would see 5.5 to 6.5 percent of the student body absent. On DoRRS, that number was roughly double—12.1 percent—and an increase from the 8.4 percent of students absent at last year’s DoRRS.

Sophomore Ori Levy chose to stay home due to concerns about what she thought the student would say in his “Telling Our Stories” speech.

“My parents told me that there was going to be a student at BHS who was given a platform to talk at DoRRS, and the student had been posting some very inappropriate things on social media,” Levy said in an interview with The Cypress. “And Mr. Meyer sent out an email saying that we just need to hear each other out, and we should just listen to each other, and these are gonna be complicated, controversial topics, but it’s just important that we like make a safe community, and I just thought that was super ignorant and disrespectful towards the situation.”

During the BSC meeting in November that saw contention over the student’s speech, multiple community members encouraged students to stage a walkout during the speech or stay home to protest the speaker, and others mentioned that they would keep their children home during the event.

Levy said she stayed home the entire day—as opposed to only skipping the student’s speech—to protest the whole event and administration.

“It was kind of just how the whole school handled the situation,” Levy said. “I think that the day in general is not bad at all and I think [it could be] productive and helpful for other students and faculty members, but this year it was very insensitive and ignorant, so I just decided to not show up at all.”

Davis said she supports students’ right to protest DoRRS, but she wishes they didn’t feel the need to do so.

“I think it’s important that kids have practice protesting in a variety of ways—that’s a healthy, developmentally appropriate thing,” Davis said. “My hope is that we can get to a place where we’re able to listen to stories that are challenging and engage in conversation.”

Davis later wrote in an email to The Cypress that students who skipped the day “because they didn’t think it mattered” should realize the importance of listening and learning about race.

“Our ‘Days of’ are a unique experience that can’t be replicated elsewhere,” Davis wrote. “There’s no TED Talk or book that has the same curated voices as the ones presented within the walls of BHS.”

Amarjot Ranu, a former “Telling Our Stories” speaker and DoRRS emcee, said she was disappointed by the students who chose not to attend school and hoped that, in the future, race education would span the whole year, not just a single instance.

“If the school made [teaching about race] an ongoing commitment, then we would have an education that forces people to talk and have meaningful discussions, and it wouldn’t be as much of a problem when people choose to skip one day,” Ranu said.

Staff absence rates saw no significant change on DoRRS, according to data provided by the Town.

The Aftermath

Davis said she was happy that DoRRS moved forward and sparked meaningful discussions, especially after all of the obstacles that it faced.

“I heard a lot of classes in the hallways participating, so the fact that teachers were engaged in four hours of intentional conversation and listening about race and racism—I think that’s great,” Davis said.

Despite worries about whether pre-recording the speeches would artificialize them, Ranu said the day’s format—which she hopes is temporary—did not strip the speeches’ power, even if it took away some of the “thrill” of a live assembly.

“I was surprised, because I really did think that it was gonna be a lot less engaging [than before],” Ranu said, “but the speeches were still really powerful and they did manage to connect to the audience.”

According to Davis, organizers invited BSC members and many staff from Town Hall to experience DoRRS from the high school. In an interview with The Cypress, BSC member Sarah Moghtader reflected on DoRRS and expressed appreciation for its job in introducing diverse perspectives to the high school community.

“I was actually very moved by the day,” Moghtader said. “I’m very excited about it, and I think the reason is that it feels to me very developmentally appropriate for high school students to start having conversations about race in the kind of supported environment that our classrooms are, and I feel that we all need to make sure to mix up in our lives and have diversity.”

Davis said she is optimistic for the future of DoRRS.

“My hope is that we could get to a point where we can do live speeches and that they’re well-received and we can handle that,” she said. “We also need to grow DoRRS to be not just [about] race, but to also include a day that is connected to ethnicity and certainly a Day of Religion. I think those are nuances of identity that we clearly need to embrace and become, as faculty, more able to navigate conversations around in our class.”

After the speeches, 239 students gave anonymous shout-outs to the “Telling Our Stories” speakers via a Google Form. In the shout-outs, which The Cypress obtained, viewers thanked the speakers for their bravery, expressed feeling validated by the experiences shared and gave personal messages to authors of speeches that especially stuck with them.

In the closing minute of his speech, Yijin told listeners they could make up for previous racism. He urged the community to let students openly address “their fear or their worry or their anger” without being “shut down.”

“We are not perfect, and we cannot believe we are perfect,” he said. “Our belief in our own supposed progressiveness can only blind ourselves to those many issues we face, papering over the rot that thrives in darkness. We must recognize that there is racism in our community to be able to fight it.”