Fifth in a series
Re “What Black Students Told the Culver High Principal”
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Principal Dylan Farris and wife Lindsey, the high school's cheer coach.
The congeniality of the human salad of ethnicities and cultures on the campus of Culver City High School is not easily explained, says Principal Dylan Farris.
He isn’t sure about a comparison with Santa Monica High School. “But certainly we are more diverse than schools east of us – for whatever reasons,” Mr. Farris says.
“We are pulling from surrounding neighborhoods. We already have a diverse neighborhood we are serving.”
The statistically technicolor campus at Culver High carries that pattern through social, students of all colors mingling, mixing, dating.
“Not to put us on a pedestal – but yes, I am going to put us on a pedestal,” the principal says.
One reason students and adults of varied cultures elsewhere don’t mingle, “people are just fearful of what they don’t know. Diversity, depending on where you are, means different things.
“Here, it means we have this wonderful, rich environment where we have different groups that really complement one another. In other areas, it is kind of a bad word.
“Dating among the various groups is so common I wouldn’t even think about it anymore.
“Let me tell you about what a long way we have come.
“We have a Senior Breakfast at the end of every year,” Mr. Farris said.
“Five hundred and fifty kids. We take them out to the practice field, and the cafeteria serves them all. We have them all sit together. It’s kind of like a last hurrah before the graduation ceremony.
“There are two young men who are a couple, and they are pretty well known. They tend to be together and open. They went to the prom together as a couple.
“I was standing on the practice field, and 500 kids are walking around, and here are the two young men embracing, making out.
“What struck me, no one even took a second look. Five hundred high school kids walking by this, and nobody even took a second glance.
“For me, that was like, wow! We have come a long way,” the principal said. “I don’t think 10 years ago that could have occurred without some level of resistance.”
(To be continued)
