Commitment to Diversity
A goal of both the iliad and the ODYSSEY is to produce and publish content that is representative of our student body. Someone once told me that everyone should be able to look into the magazine and find a piece that relates to them because that is truly being diverse and representative of our community. Throughout my time in both programs, I have participated in many opportunities to help ensure that our content shows the wide variety of experiences of the people within our community.
Recruitment
Recruitment is one of our biggest ways to ensure a diverse environment within our program. I have helped post videos online, social media posts and this year I will be visiting our feeder middle schools to assist in the recruitment process. Part of the goal of the iliad is to feature and publish rising freshmen from our feeder schools. In order to do so, I reached out to members of both schools to send over a presentation and discuss a time we can visit to speak to students.
Video by Colin Frick
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Black History Month Gallery
The Black Culture Club at Clarke Central High School used to host a Black History Month celebration every year. They recently brought the tradition back, with last year being their second year of the celebration. I enjoyed being able to capture all the performers and the stories they told during the performance through photography.
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Linnentown Gallery
The ODYSSEY had a panel of residents from the former town of Linnentown, which had suffered greatly from gentrification, come to the school to discuss the issue. I was given the opportunity to photograph the event and help assist them in telling their story through a gallery of the panel discussion that took place at our school.
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Do Not Interview List
After each cycle, the staff is required to fill out a form of everyone they had an interview with that cycle. In the form, they must give grade level, gender and racial identity. We do this to ensure our magazine is using diverse and representative voices in our reporting. This form is accessible to everyone on staff throughout the year and continues to be updated to make sure sources are not being overused as well, and we get a wide range of stakeholders.
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Metric Analysis
Prior to the start of collecting submissions for this school year, I compiled diversity metrics from several of the past editions of the iliad. Every year we analyze our past metrics and compare them to the school’s actual metrics. After our analysis, we set a diversity goal for the new school year in order to continue to improve the representation within our program and magazine.
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Embracing Hair
I had the opportunity to photograph a story on the natural hair movement and the effects it has had on women of color. The story was written to share personal experiences and struggles that women had faced due to their natural hair. I wanted to stylize the shots, but also get some to accurately represent the story. To do so, I had one of the students do her hair and I photographed the process to get environmental portraits to properly portray the story visually.
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Juneteenth Celebrations
For Juneteenth, I created a post outlining the celebrations happening around Athens. Juneteenth is the date of the official end of slavery within the United States. To honor this important day, I wanted to inform the community of ways they could attend events to participate in and celebrate the diverse community we have.