By Abby Davidson

This year students took a trip to Cedar Falls at UNI for the Diversity Conference with Mrs. Erickson.

The students listened to keynote speaker Jason Sole, who is the leader of the Minneapolis branch of NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Sole spoke on social justice issues, police shootings and brutality, disparity between white and black drug convictions, and other things that fall in those categories. Sole has defeated the odds of his multiple incarcerations, by getting his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Science degrees in criminal justice. He has been an educator on criminal justice for eight years and has a memoir called From Prison to Ph.D.: A Memoir of Hope, Resilience, and Second Chances.

Not only did students hear from Sole, but also students heard from people of all walks of life, such as principals, artists, and activists. They heard from Norman Ferguson, Emily Harsch, Umaru Balde, Dr. Beverly Smith, Dr. Felicia Smith Nalls, Dr. Alan Heisterkamp, Liang Chee Wee, Ph.D., Dr. Lena Hill, Charles Swanson, Lisa Munoz, and David Hernandez. Each of them all help in someway with working towards equality for all races, genders, and sexual orientation.

Erickson feels it is important for students to attend such conferences. “Experiences inform our behavior.  Every individual has a unique story.  We all want to be known. I believe it is important for us, as educators, to expose students to many different stories,” Erickson said. “Sometimes we forget that each individual has a unique story to tell and a unique gift to share.  We must be willing to receive from each other.  This conference gave students the opportunity to hear stories that would not normally hear, so that they could have a better understanding of our complex world,” she said.

Students from Mount Vernon who attended the conference feel as if they really did learn something, even if some things were hard topics to maybe talk about or understand. The world faces problems we maybe don’t talk about and we should.

“The trip was really great experience to be educated on some rough topics that are sometimes difficult to talk about,” senior Ben McGuire said. “But by discussing them we are able to become part of the solution, not the problem.”