Backlash ensues after Century High School Unity Day activity backfires

The Baltimore Sun reports:

A Unity Day activity at Century High School last week meant to tackle and tear down stereotypes ended with some students upset and in tears after the exercise resulted in slurs toward certain racial groups, members of the LGBTQA community and others being written on posters.

As a part of Unity Day on Friday, the Century High School Student Government Association executed a number of activities that were “designed to strengthen student understanding of the experiences of others and how diversity of experience can be a unifying force,” Century Principal Troy Barnes said in an email sent to parents Monday morning. The activities included both adult and student speakers, he said in the email.

One such activity, The Wall, resulted in backlash, prompting the email to parents.

“[The activity] was intended to have students confront stereotypes and false perceptions about various ‘identities’ or groups and to eradicate them and symbolically destroy them,” Barnes said in his email. “This exercise has been successfully used in the past at such events as the [Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership] leadership camps for students and is part of a repertoire of strategies used in diversity training within CCPS and was presented as an activity for inclusion by our student leaders.”

Today's students focus in on other things than the three R's....