By Maddie Gannon and Gabi Sorrentino
"A history teacher once told my class that unless slaves acted out, they were 'happy' and led a 'good life' while enslaved."
That was a post from the @dear_fsha Instagram account about an anonymous student’s experience at Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy. On the account, there are over 100 more like it just since June 2020. Over the last 10 months, it became a place for current students and alumni to share their experiences of racism, bias and microaggressions at the all-girls, Catholic private school in La Cañada Flintridge, California.
At least five similar Instagram accounts were created in response to the growing Black Lives Matter movement this summer. The accounts document the experiences of minorities at elite private schools in the Los Angeles area, including specific occurrences with peers, faculty and administrators. The anonymous stories speak to a culture of bias at elite private schools in Los Angeles.
Flintridge Sacred Heart is a private, all-girls, Catholic college preparatory day and boarding school in La Cañada Flintridge, a city about 14 miles outside of Los Angeles. It is the only all-girls school in Los Angeles that has boarding students. Tuition sits at $27,650 a year and surpasses $30,000 with mandatory added fees. For boarding school, the cost is over $61,740 a year.
The city of La Cañada Flintridge falls within L.A. County. According to the Census Bureau, La Cañada Flintridge is predominately white, while 0.8% of residents are Black or African American, 31.3% are Asian and 10% are Hispanic or Latinx.
While Flintridge Sacred Heart is a private institution and doesn’t require students to be from the area, Maya Richard-Craven, FSHA class of 2012, said she sees a direct correlation between the city’s demographics and the school.
"The school reflects the La Cañada population," said Richard-Craven, creator of the @dear_fsha Instagram account. "And the La Cañada population is predominantly white."
Back to School
Richard-Craven created the @dear_fsha Instagram account amidst the growing Black Lives Matter movement following the murder of George Floyd in late May 2020. "The fact that there is a national dialogue going on is amazing but I feel like we also need to do it on the microlevel," she said.
The first post by Richard-Craven was on June 23, 2020. In a week the page was filled with 30 posts. "Underrepresented students needed a space to talk about their experiences," she said.
While Richard-Craven runs the account, all of the posts come from direct messages from current and former Flintridge Sacred Heart students sharing their experiences. Richard-Craven acts as an intermediary by posting them on the page in order to create awareness.
Around the same time Richard-Craven started the account, DeShawn Samad, FSHA class of 2011, was also inspired to spark change at her alma mater.
"I wrote them a letter about their lack of response and lack of addressing systemic racism and their lack of addressing Black Lives Matter and their lack of making sure their students were OK," said Samad.
While enrolled at Flintridge Sacred Heart, Richard-Craven experienced a similar lack of support as a Black student. She described having a group of five friends, all of whom were Black. She felt other students and even teachers were threatened by them.
"I felt that people were afraid of us and knowing that made me sad," she said. "All my white friends hung out together in groups but the teachers were chastising us more and just little things [like that]."
Samad also described little instances of being treated differently as a Black student. For her, they added to a culture in which white students were prioritized.
"I think [FSHA] catered to the free-thinking woman," Samad said. "But the free-thinking white woman is the one that got the most support or the one that got the most advocacy or space to talk."
As a 15-year-old in high school, Samad said, she often did not realize that these occurrences were coming from a place of discrimination. She initially took them as her teachers personally not liking her.
That was exemplified by an experience she had with a math teacher at the school. Flintridge Sacred Heart requires students in honors math classes to receive a minimum letter grade in order to be placed in the honors math class the next year. Despite getting the same grade as many other students in the class, Samad and the only other Black student in the honors math class were the only two students to get demoted to non-honors math class for the next year.
Her parents had to go speak to the teachers. The reason the teacher gave for this happening was 'protocol' despite many other students in the class getting the same grade and not being demoted. "If it wasn’t for the involvement of my parents and my parents going to speak with administrators and teachers, a lot of that would have gone unnoticed," Samad said.
Samad, who went on to receive a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Spelman College and now works for an energy startup company, said being held back could have had serious ramifications for her future. "I would have been demoted in my math classes, I would have been demoted in my science classes, I wouldn’t have passed tenth grade English," she said.
Students who identify as LGBTQ+ also felt that they weren’t equally supported by the school. Claud Ruder, Flintridge Sacred Heart class of 2018, who prefers a gender-neutral pronoun, felt that the school’s practices excluded the LGBTQ+ community. Every morning during announcements, the principal told students to 'Stay classy ladies.' To Ruder, that phrase did not represent all of Flintridge Sacred Heart’s student body.
Ruder described Flintridge Sacred Heart's culture as "extreme heteronormative and classist."
"There was a way you were supposed to look, act and dress and if you weren’t in that then you weren’t really a part of the community," Ruder said.
The Future at Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy
Samad’s letter last summer opened a door for her to start working hand-in-hand with the Flintridge Sacred Heart administration. She is helping them curate diverse reading lists, curriculum and working towards making class discussions more inclusive. "I spoke to the director of curriculum and she hadn't even noticed [the required readings] were 80% white stories," she said.
Richard-Craven has also taken matters into her own hands. She pitched and got approved a new scholarship opportunity for students whose parents make under $100,000 and are from historically oppressed groups.
In early June 2020, the Flintridge Sacred Heart administration put out a statement on its Instagram account addressing the murder of George Floyd and saying the school is renewing its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.
"We want to acknowledge to all of you that Flintridge Sacred Heart, as an institution, is not perfect; we have made mistakes and we ask your forgiveness," the statement read. "Please know we are committed to doing all we can to educate ourselves to become better agents of change; to live more clearly from our values of faith, integrity and truth."
The statement, which was signed by Sister Carolyn McCormack and Sister Celeste Marie Botello, the president and principal of the school, also said Flintridge Sacred Heart has changed reading lists and curricula to include more diverse voices and perspectives.
On the 'Who we are' page of Flintridge Sacred Heart’s website there is a commitment to diversity and inclusion statement that calls diversity "a vital element of Flintridge Sacred Heart’s mission."
"At Flintridge Sacred Heart, we seek to create and sustain a vibrant, inclusive community and we value and appreciate the uniqueness contained within each person so as to honor the diversity of God’s creation," it also reads.
Richard-Craven and Samad are both optimistic about the direction in which Flintridge Sacred Heart is heading. But although the school has made strides towards a more inclusive environment, Ruder is still skeptical about how much the school can change.
"I think the problems are rooted so deeply in what FSHA is that it won’t change," Ruder said. "It won’t be the school that I would have liked to go to."
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