Glastonbury students hold small protest
Group of mostly current, former public schools students tells stories of discrimination in majority-white town
A small group, made up mostly of current and former Glastonbury public schools students, stood on the side of the town’s Main Street on Saturday afternoon, chanting in unison as cars passed by. “Glastonbury is racist!”
“End oppression in our schools!” “Black youth matter!”
After several minutes of chanting on the Hubbard Green, the group of nearly 20 people moved slowly up the road, with passing cars sometimes honking as their drivers waved or held out thumbs-up. When the group reached Glastonbury
High School, they stopped and began to tell stories of discrimination in the majority-white town.
Jill Williams, an eighth-grader at Smith Middle School, said she’s experienced racism in the public schools every year since kindergarten, largely from other students.Williams, who is Black, said other students have called her the N-word and, most recently, have texted her photos of a KKK cross-burning.
“I have experienced so much racial backlash and discrimination, I can’t remember a year without backlash,” she said. “Even in kindergarten, they were like, ‘Oh, you’re dirty’ and stuff like that.”
Saturday’s protest was Williams’ idea, as was a youth-led offshoot of the Black Lives Matter group BLM860.
The racism directed at Williams has significantly impacted her and her education, she said, including that she stopped taking the bus after other students verbally harassed her.
“It really gets in the way of my education,” Williams said. “It feels like there’s so many different sacrifices, and it would just be so much easier if I wasn’t getting bullied [and] ridiculed and hate-crimed.”
Representatives of Smith Middle School did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.Other students echoed Williams’ experience in the school district, including at Glastonbury High
School.
Erin Melocowsky, a recent graduate of Glastonbury High School, said white students used the N-word frequently and she felt that administrators failed to intervene even when other students reported the racist behavior.“
They don’t care. They don’t see racism as a problem,” Melocowsky said at Saturday’s rally. “They’re teaching kids to be racist, and they’re condoning it.”
Ahead of Saturday’s rally, Melocowsky told The Courant that, as a high school student, she reported the issues to a Glastonbury High School assistant prin
cipal and that the assistant principal brushed it off as typical of teenagers.
Principal Nancy Bean adamantly denied that the assistant principal made such a comment.
“I certainly respect students being activists for antiracism, but I’m disheartened because this is not true,” Bean previously told The Courant. Williams — along with her older sister Kennedy Williams, who is a founder of “Black in Glastonbury” social media accounts where people can share their experiences anonymously — crafted several demands of the Glastonbury Public Schools.
In her list, Williams demanded the schools incorporate anti-racism into the curriculum, hire more teachers and administrators of color and implement clear punishments for racist behavior and language.
“We can’t not try,” Williams said.