Students will be able to hear a variety of performances as well as get involved with a statewide education issue during The Zero Tolerance Open Mic Night.
The event is designed to raise awareness about the school-to-prison pipeline and the zero tolerance policies.
“Students for Education Reform wanted to do something to allow fellow students to engage on the issues,” said Renee Hagerty, a senior studying political science.
The event will be an educational experience for students about the school-to-prison pipeline.
“The ‘school-to-prison pipeline’ refers to the systemic and often complex set of practices that increases a young person’s likelihood of dropping out of school and serving time in the juvenile and criminal justice system,” said Tehama Lopez Bunyasi, an assistant political science professor, in an email.
Through Lopez Bunyasi’s Politics of Race class, students will be putting together a documentary to send to Ohio Legislature to ask them to repeal the zero tolerance laws that end up disenfranchising students. The laws were originally directly related to weapons, but began to morph into something much larger.
“It also appears that young people of color are often pushed out of schools by what the ACLU calls ‘the discriminatory application of discipline,’” Lopez Bunyasi said. “Such application of discipline is facilitated by zero-tolerance policies that often exact overly punitive consequences for relatively minor infractions.”
Students will be able to participate in the video at the event, as well as hearing a variety of different performances that are loosely related with a similar injustice theme.
“We expect to see a couple of stand-up acts, some hip-hop performers from Hip Hop Congress,” Hagerty said. “There also may be some spoken word and some videos. After all of that, there will be an opportunity for students to get involved with a photo campaign in our video.”
IYGB:
What: Zero Tolerance Open Mic Night
When: 5 p.m. Thursday
Where: The Front Room
Admission: Free
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