Robert E. Lee Elementary is going through a renaming because many people are offended because the school is named after a confederate general. The nominations will be compiled in preparation for the board to decide on a name on May 23. “There are some people who always wanted the name to be changed, myself included
because of the legacy of Robert E Lee.” says Jack Vela, a senior at Mccallum who supports the decision. “Maybe it was guilt that we have all these symbols that started this all.”
Vela went to Lee from 2nd to 6th grade and all of his four siblings attended the school as well. So it is fair to call his family a true “Lee Family.” Another Lee alumni who also goes to Mccallum Nadia Freeman says she thinks the school should be named after Bruce Lee so the school could have a less offensive name but also remain “Lee.” Jack Vela believes it should be renamed Waller Creek Elementary because he likes the name and “because it's an easy way to name it geographically.”
“The school was built in the 30s when the city was undergoing a lot of segregation. I feel like at that time it made sense to name the school that to bring back the old confederate idea but at the same time he was also active in education.” says Vela, he thinks that although it may have made sense at the time they named it to name it after a white hero with the society we live in now it is just too offensive to keep the name. There is an argument that the name should remain the same to serve as a memory and a lesson but lessons can be taught and memories will be remembered.
“It's hard to see your elementary school's name changed because of sentimental value, but I don't think that's enough to ignore what the original name stands for.” says Nadia Freeman. She thinks we should question whether or not we want to have a school named after a man who stood for something so evil. Vela is excited for the change because he never expected the people to actually do something about the name.
The three final name choices that the board is deciding between are Russell Lee, one of America’s most important photographers. The next is Bettie Mann who was the first African-American teacher and the last is Wheeler’s Grove which was the site of Austin’s first Juneteenth celebrations. Out of the final three names Jack Vela thinks it should be Bettie Mann. “It's absolutely ludicrous after all this time we still have schools and in the schools that are considered the good schools are the white schools even like 40 years later and we haven't really done anything you know as a community to address that and I think that's a serious problem in and of itself than just the name of school.” says Vela. The renaming of Lee Elementary school could just be the beginning of some big changes that we, as Americans will need to take to rid our society of certain bad messages and symbols that we display.
This is a solid story and made a good brief for the print edition of The Shield. It occurred to me as I was editing it that it would have made sense to reference the Columbus, S.C., shootings because I honestly don't think that this name change would have been considered and pushed through had those shootings not occurred. You picked two good interview subjects. I think you needed to do some more work to integrate Jack's final quote into the story. I think it could have been integrated with a stronger transition, but in this draft it seems to be off topic. I think the point he was trying to make is that a name change doesn't address more important inequities involving race in AISD. Some transition of that sort would have made that quote a more effective part of the story. But I took it out since that transition was not there.
ReplyDeleteIf you would like to write an update story for the website after tonight's board decision, I would be most happy to print it on the website for extra credit.
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