Dear SYPP Community,

I am writing to formally inform you that I have accepted the offer to be the new Co-Director here at SYPP. I am very excited and thankful for the opportunity. I look forward to the next 3 years and what they will bring. I have been part of this organization for the last 7 years starting as a youth member, adult ally, and now in a staff position. SYPP has had a major impact in my life and development as a Womyn and I am very happy that I am able to be part of that space for other people.

Right now we are in the process of planning our 20^th anniversary celebration the FAMBAM! which is going to be an extremely fun event that I am also pretty excited about. I will be introducing myself to everyone so if you haven’t met me already I will see you there. We are also in the midst of the Education Justice Campaign tackling the School to Prison Pipeline and organizing to get Restorative Justice piloted in Cleveland and in the whole Seattle Public School system.

Thank you for being a part of the SYPP family. We appreciate all of your contributions over the years.

Sincerely,

Anelise Moon

Farewell from Mar

Dear Community,

 
I’m writing to let you know that as of April 12^th I will no longer be working as a Co-Director of Seattle Young People’s Project. I am excited to pursue my dream of becoming a birthing companion/doula and continuing to support youth in different capacities.

In the nine months since I began as Co-Director, I’ve been fortunate to be part of a tremendous amount of growth and rebirth. SYPP youth organizers surveyed over 100 of their peers in 2010 and showed up at a school board meeting demanding their stories be heard. These same core members returned to facilitate our 8-day social justice summer intensive, the Youth Organizing Institute. During the winter months, we dabbled in storytelling through film. I’m excited to report that in conjunction with our work on the Subcommittee on Racial Disproportionality in School Discipline, our efforts have blossomed into two schools offering to be the potential sites of a pilot project for restorative justice policies. 

As a Co-Director, my main responsibility is to co-support the trunk of the tree that is SYPP. Through this, I have realized the abundance of time we have to teach and learn from each other what it means to live and be in community. There is an enormity of learning and bravery that permeates the social space of our office. Often, SYPP is the first place young folks learn how to ask for support without fear and how to advocate for themselves. At SYPP, I learned the value of slowing down enough to catch and savor these moments of spontaneous learning.

While at SYPP, I explored some questions that I will take with me as I continue in “the movement”:

• How do we create sustainability and abundance when our communities embody so much scarcity?
• How can we incorporate processes for self-accountability so that we may better support community accountability and transformation?
• How do we balance grassroots and collective organizing within non-profit structures?

In closing, I fondly remember a group building activity when staff and youth organizers formed a human knot and the eruption of giggles as we tried to un-tangle ourselves. I have so much love for SYPP and our dedication to be within the tangles and finding ways to undo them.

To building and intertwining ourselves! I look forward to celebrating with you at the FamBam on May 19 at Blaine Memorial United Methodist Church!

Un abrazo,
Mar

Join Seattle Young People’s Project as we celebrate our 20 year anniversary of supporting young people to become community leaders and changemakers!

This year look forward to endless old photos from our past, delicious desserts, video interviews with former SYPP youth organizers, and some serious community building.
You’ll be sharing a table with 7 friends so start asking each other now. Please invite folks who might be featured in our 20 year slideshow, please invite folks who have heard you talk about SYPP but who have never met us, and please bring your family. We are looking forward to celebrating our past, present and future!

What’s a FamBam?
fam·i·ly [fam-uh-lee, fam-lee] noun + bam [bam] noun, verb =  Fam·Bam
-noun
1. a night of sharing, storytelling, eating and laughter with old and new friends.
ex. I can’t wait to go to the fambam tonight so I can eat til I burst and laugh til I cry!

-verb
2. to bring communities together to celebrate the accomplishments of youth organizers with families, community and SYPP supporters.
ex. I’m glad we fambam’d last night. I learned so much about everyone there!

Purchase tickets here: http://guestli.st/88986

Police in Schools:

Student Perceptions of School Resource Officers

December 2011

Focus Group with SYPP Members

SYPP began this study with two focus groups—composed of ten female students, all SYPP members from five greater Seattle area schools.  The students were enrolled in the 9th, 10th, 11th, or 12th grade and came from Garfield High School, Franklin High School, Chief Sealth International High School, Ingraham High School, and Kenmore Junior High School.  The focus group’s primary topic was student attitudes about having a police officer, usually called a school resource officer (SRO), assigned to their school.  The discussion was not overly formal, and students were encouraged by the focus group facilitators, two law students from the University of Washington, to respond to and ask each other questions.[1]

Beyond the call of duty?

Overall, most students in the focus groups agreed that SROs tend to go beyond their safety and disciplinary duties and establish their authority by intimidating and harassing some students.  This harassment was most commonly described as being unsolicited comments, usually about a student’s clothing or appearance, but sometimes about a student’s academic performance.

Student opinion was fractured on whether this was an acceptable trade-off, given the benefits of having a police officer for campus safety.  Some believed that SROs made schools safer and that behavior was unsavory but not excessively negative; roughly half of the focus group participants believed SRO behavior impugned students’ sense of self-worth and made them more likely to lash out against the SRO or school officials, particularly when SROs searched students who hadn’t done anything wrong.

Searched

Searching students for evidence of wrongdoing, along with the harassing comments, were viewed by most focus group members as a way for SROs to intimidate students.  K.B., a 12^th grade female student, noted that the SRO at her school “judges me” and is “intimidating” whenever they speak.  Last year, K.B. was searched for marijuana possession after she left school grounds during lunch (allowed by her school during lunch hours) and walked past a popular off-campus gathering place for students.  According to K.B., the SRO didn’t have grounds for a search and simply searched her because she was walking by a place where students sometimes gather to smoke tobacco or marijuana.  The search turned up nothing, but the SRO nevertheless told her that he would arrest her if he “ever [saw her] in that area again.”

K.A., a 10^th grade student, and K.B. both felt SROs profiled them based on the disciplinary history of their older brothers, who the SROs were familiar with.  On one occasion, an SRO told K.B. that she “would probably drop out just like her brother.”  K.A. noted that SROs “constantly bug” her about things on account of her brother’s problems.  K.A. and K.B. experienced this treatment from their first day at that school, before they were given a chance to establish a reputation for themselves, because their SROs recognized their last names.  Other students felt “watched,” while those who attended Garfield High School reported unwarranted sweeps of all students’ lockers.  These accounts document a culture of intimidation and harassment for certain students that focus group members considered counterproductive to scholastic and social growth.

Security

Some students felt that SROs provided a sense of safety despite the negatives.  M.A., a 10^th grade student, noted that “we need SROs there because there’s so many kids, even if they might take things too far sometimes.”  Others felt that the intimidation and harassment overrode any feeling of added safety, and had little respect for school principals and vice-principals who “stay in their offices all the time” so that the SRO would handle all disciplinary matters.  K.B., who had been searched to no avail, noted that the way she was treated made her feel like “maybe [she] should have smoked that joint.”  M.B., a 9^th grader, echoed these sentiments when she noted that when SROs targeted her, she found herself wanting to actually break the rules whe was falsely accused of violating.  These statements indicate that many students internalize SRO harassment and “live down” to incorrect SRO judgments about their character.  In the final analysis, this behavior poisons the school environment by lowering student self-esteem and encouraging students to pay the harassment forward by taking out anxiety on other students.

November 2011 Student Survey on SROs

Immediately following the focus groups, participants worked with University of Washington law students (maybe call us focus group coordinators?) from the Race and Justice Clinic to refine questions for a survey of a wider group of students.  The survey, conducted informally but with close attention to neutral question structure, consisted of 9 questions about how visible SROs are at school, how much contact students have with them, and students’ reactions to both SRO contact and SRO presence overall.  This report only focuses on the most significant results, but all results can be seen in the datasheet.

SYPP members administered the survey at their respective high schools; participants were randomly selected, with administrators distributing their surveys to an entire class at a time.  This yielded 102 responses from students at five Seattle and greater King County area schools.[2]  Because the survey was administered in classrooms, all survey participants were actively enrolled at school (that is, none were on suspension or expulsion at the time).  Survey participants were in grades 9 through 12 as below:

Survey Summary

The survey revealed a few key themes:

• SRO Visibility: Students of color, particularly, African-American students, were generally more likely to see their SROs during the school day
  • In contrast to this, students from Asian backgrounds were by far the least likely to see or interact with their SRO

• SRO Contact: Most close interactions with SROs (being questioned or searched) were negative experiences for the students involved

• SRO Searches: Being searched by a police officer assigned to school was a universally negative experience for the students involved; in the comments section, many added that the search discovered nothing

• Comfort at School: Almost 27% of students reported they were either more likely or less likely to attend school due to the SRO being present there.

• About 14% of the total survey population were less likely to want to go to school, and these students had high levels of contact (seeing, being questioned by, or being searched by the SRO)
• About 13% were more likely to attend school due to SRO presence; most of these students saw their SRO regularly, but had very few interactions with the SRO

Questioning by SROs

Students were asked whether they had ever been questioned by their SRO and, if so, how the experience made them feel.  This included any type of questioning, and so included students who had been questioned as suspects, victims, or witnesses.[3]

Notes

• Students from most racial/ethnic groups were questioned at proportional rates.

• The exception was students of Asian backgrounds, who comprised were questioned much less than any other group.

• Males and females were questioned at relatively equal rates.

Search by SROs

As with being questioned by the SRO, students were asked whether they had been searched and, if so, how the search made them feel.

Notes

• Every student who had been searched felt it was a very negative experience, with some checking that they felt harassed or intimidated, and others writing in descriptions of the negative experience.
• Students from most racial/ethnic groups were searched at proportional rates.
• As with being questioned, Asian students had much less contact with SROs: no Asian students reported having been searched
• Males were considerably more likely to be searched than females.

Reason for Search

Students who had been searched were also asked whether they were given any reason or explanation for being searched:

Notes

• This matched the information gathered from the focus group: students, were usually only told to hand over their bag so that the SRO could search it; after nothing was discovered, which was overwhelmingly the case among focus group participants, the students were told to be on their way with no further explanation of what the SRO was looking for or what they had been doing that led to the search.
• Students in the focus group who had been searched but not given any explanation generally had no serious disciplinary history; because of this, and because they were not told why the search was happening, several assumed it was because of their race or ethnicity.

Which Students SROs Focus On

All students were asked whether they thought their SRO focused more on certain students than others.  Those who answered yes were also asked to write in why they thought the SRO focused on those students.

Reaction to Having an SRO at School

One of the key questions on the survey asked whether having an SRO assigned to their school made students more or less likely to attend school; those surveys that answered “Less likely” were then compared to other questions to see what may have led students to give this response.

• Out of those students who answered “Less likely”:
  • Nearly all – 13 students out of 14 – knew another student who had been questioned or searched by an SRO
  • A majority – 8 students out 14 – had been searched and questioned by an SRO
  • A large majority – 11 students out of 14 – knew another student who had been suspended, expelled, changed schools, or dropped out because of an interaction with an SRO
  • In general, these students had a much higher degree of contact with SROs than all students combined
  • The students who answered “More likely” had less contact with SROs: only 1 out of 13 students who answered this way had been questioned by an SRO, and none had ever been searched.

Conclusions

• We can infer that students benefit most from an SRO who they see around school regularly, but do not closely interact with: they feel more secure at school because they know the SRO is on hand for any serious incidents, but don’t feel like they’re being unfairly targeted or picked on.  Regular SRO interaction was not viewed as rapport-building by students, but as harassment.
• Students are usually searched without being given a reason; even when the search turns up nothing, no explanation or apology is offered.  This tends to make students resent their SRO, and can be particularly harmful in that students who don’t break the rules begin to see their SRO as someone who is out to get them.
• Students in the focus group tended to have more of a problem with an SRO’s actions than the mere presence of an SRO on campus.  Many appreciated having a police officer around for safety, but questioned the decisions that SROs made to search or repeatedly talk to certain students.
• Being searched by an SRO, especially when the student has done nothing wrong and has no contraband, can be tremendously damaging to both that student’s level of comfort at school and the SRO’s reputation and effectiveness in working with the student population.

• host a community meal: hosting a meal dedicated to raising funds for the organization
• bake sales – because who doesn’t like a fresh cookie?
• host a spoken word or band performance and ask for sliding scale donations
• phone calls, emails and asking 1:1 for donations

Hold up!! What’s going on at SYPP that I can share?

• This year’s YO 2.0 emphasizes technology as a tool within community organizing. We have enrolled 14 young women into the program and we are learning about: grassroots fundraising, understanding root causes of oppression and ways to challenge them. We are super excited to be teaming up with Reel Grrls to document our Education Justice Campaign and Biz Kids is coming in to document our Bowl-a-thon work!

• Education Justice Campaign: We are meeting every Wednesday at 4:30pm at the office. Recently, we collaborated with folks from YouthSpeaks to prepare for our Speak Out! on November 16 at Garfield Teen Life Center. We hope to share information about our campaign and the stories that ground it. We need YOU to be there to support us! Contact the Co-Directors for more info.

How does the Bowl-a-thon work?

• There are 30 Teams with a minimum of 5 people
• Each team raises money for SYPP ($100 per Adult and $50 per Youth)
• Our theme this year is Blast to the Past: Classic Fashion through the Decades. Each team is expected to have their own interpretation of the theme – so get creative and host a crafty party! We award prizes!!
• On Saturday, December 17 from 12-4pm your team will sign up for a time to bowl and celebrate with us at the AMF Imperial Lanes! SYPP pays for you to bowl (shoes & lanes) and we’ll feed you!

How do I create/join a Bowl-a-thon Team?

1. Go to: https://sypp.myetap.org/fundraiser/bowl2011/
2. Click on “Register”
3. Click on ” I need to Create an Account” or “I already Have an Account” and fill out your information.
4. Follow the rest of the steps and you’ll create your Team Page.
5. Email your friends, families, coworkers and community and ask them to be team members and for donations
6. Captains, don’t forget: team members must create their own account and sign up as a member of your team!

I just want to donate, where do I go?

Go to:  bit.ly/syppbowl2011

Blast to the Past:

Classic fashion through the decades

DATE: DECEMBER 17, 2011 Saturday

TIME: 12-4pm

SYPP’s Bowl-a-thon is a youth-organized, grassroots fundraising event that brings together youth, allies, and community members dedicated to supporting youth power and youth activism in Seattle.

There will be food, fantastic prizes, free t-shirts, and incredible flashbacks to fashion firsts, fits and flops!

Get involved and sign up as a Team Captain or donate to support your favorite social justice fashionista!

• Can you find 4 (or more) of your friends who would each be willing to raise $100 for SYPP? Your team goal is $500!
• Do you have a love for youth organizing and SYPP’s Education Justice Campaign?
• Do you love dressing up and being silly?

Here’s the video created by Pepperspray Productions about the event:

Thursday, September 22 from 7 – 9 pm

The event is FREE, please register HERE

This panel will feature speakers from Seattle Young People’s Project, TeamChild, Children and Youth Advocacy Clinic at UW Law and Kent School District Alliance for Diversity and Equity

DIRECTIONS:

From I-5 South: Take exit 154A on the left to merge onto I-405 N toward Renton Take exit 2 to merge onto WA-167 S toward Auburn Take the 84th Ave S/N Central Ave exit toward Kent City Center Turn left onto 84th Ave S Continue onto Central Ave N Turn left onto E Smith St Destination will be on the right From I-5 North: Take exit 149A for WA-516 E toward Kent Turn right onto WA-516 E/S Kent Des Moines Rd Continue to follow WA-516 E Turn left onto Central Ave S Turn right onto E Smith St Destination will be on the right

Please welcome:

Some Words From Jeremy:

“For the last 3 ½ years, SYPP’s work and mission have been at the center of my life, and I think it would take some particularly strong poetry to express how deeply SYPP and its youth members have affected me.  When I became a youth organizer at 14, my friends and I often imagined creating a place like SYPP, so the privilege of working as a Co-Director has been the fulfillment of a life’s wish.

Although I’m very critical of how the non-profit industrial complex saps energy and initiative from social movements, I’m so proud of how seriously SYPP thinks about its mission, its relevance, and its relationship to the much bigger struggle for justice.  From an insider perspective, I am more convinced than ever of how important SYPP’s local youth organizing and leadership development work is.  I just wish we had even more community investment and capacity to better realize all the powerful strategies and ideas that we’ve generated.

That’s why I’m going to continue into the future as a passionate supporter and donor.  I hope that anyone who reads this will consider stepping up their support.  Now is the time to take SYPP to the next level!”

Announcing the New Position

While we’re really sad to see Jeremy go, we love SYPP’s ability to evolve and change with new members and staff, and we’re excited about finding an amazing new Co-Director to take his place!  Could you be that Co-Director?  Do you know someone who’s perfect for the job?

We’ve attached the Co-Director job description below.  The due date for applications is May 20th.

Click for the Job Announcement and how to apply: 2011 Co-Director Announcement