Daniel Diaz tells his story

When my adviser asked me to write a news story about a current scandal unfolding at one of our feeder middle schools, I was originally hesitant to accept; I was a sports writer and wasn’t sure if I wanted to get involved. However, since the story was “hot” and making national news, I decided to branch out and tackle the article.

The scandal allegedly arose after the local middle school forced Latino students to sign a behavior/bullying contract that stated, “comments made in Spanish will be assumed to be bullying” and would result in immediate suspension.

The school claimed this was in response to a series of incidents involving mostly Hispanic students who chose to verbally harass their peers in Spanish so as to avoid repercussions from the English-speaking teachers and faculty.

A day after the contracts were issued, a family of one of the Latino boys, whose sister attended our high school, contacted an attorney from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund with the financial assistance of one of our school’s teachers and adviser of the Latin American Student Organization to sue the middle school.

Going into the story, this was pretty much all the background information I had. As a bilingual student and member of L.A.S.O I felt a connection to the offended students and their families.

When writing a news story, this is typically bad. However, as a proud alumnus of the middle school with a number of good, long standing relationships with the current staff, I was set on being as objective as possible. I was determined to report both sides of the story and avoid any subjective viewpoints.

Continued in news, click HERE