Jennifer Norris, Director of Student Activities, Trinity School NYC: “I just keep trying to disrupt wherever I can. And now that I’m in this position, I have so many opportunities to do that.”
Norris: “I don’t hide how I feel, but I can’t pretend I’m [not] promoting an agenda even though I clearly am with all the stuff I’m doing.”
Norris: “There’s always groups of teachers who want to do these [activist] things, but the administration just wouldn’t let us. So, we’ve been just sneaking things in [through] the cracks.”
Norris: “When I first started there [at Trinity School NYC], I hid my whole life. I felt like a double agent or something.”
Norris: “Unfortunately, it’s the white boys who feel very entitled to express their opposite opinions and just push back. There’s a huge contingent of them that are just horrible. And you’re like, ‘Are you always going to be horrible, or are you just going to be horrible right now?’ Don’t know…I think they need to go. I think they’re really awful people…They’re so protected by capitalism. It makes me sad.”
Norris: Trinity School NYC is “definitely a school where conservatives would not feel comfortable.”
Norris: “I’m in charge” and “I won’t” allow Republican perspectives on campus. “Not on my watch.”
Norris: “I talked to the [Trinity NYC high school] principal and I was like, ‘So, if I’m running this, I’m 100% democratic with the students. I will tell them the [speaker] options and they are voting.’ I’m not going to just be like, ‘These are our speakers for the year.’ I want to make sure the kids are engaged and care. So, I do put a lot of it on them, but I said, ‘There are some speakers I am not even going to put on the plate for them [students], and if that’s a problem, I cannot be in charge of that.’ And he [principal] was like, ‘No.’ He said, ‘This isn’t the time for both [political] sides.’ He said, ‘We’re not in that place in our society.’”
AC