Mitty High alumni decry racism they faced at school

With racial justice at the forefront of conversations across the nation, alumni of some of San Jose’s most acclaimed private schools have joined the chorus of voices to describe cultures of racism and discrimination they say administrators did little to quash.

By Friday morning, hundreds of current and former Archbishop Mitty High School students had taken to Twitter to share their stories using the hashtag #ExposeMitty. The students’ stories ran the gamut — from teachers using the N-word to minority students facing significantly harsher punishments than their white peers

to a lack of recourse for those who endured racism and discrimination.

Alumni said the social media movement was sparked by a former student who experienced racism during his time at Mitty and felt school administrators did not act promptly enough to denounce the death of George Floyd — a black man who died in Minneapolis police custody last week. The students are working to compile the list of stories, send it to school administrators and demand changes, which they are still developing.

Erica Johnson, a 2017 graduate who went on to attend USC, tweeted that during her junior year at Mitty, she caught wind of a video posted on Snapchat by another

student of her and her friends with the caption “I feel like I’m back in the hood.”

Mitty is a high-performing Catholic high school on the west side of San Jose with an annual tuition of about $23,000. As one of only a few black students at the school, Johnson found the video racist and brought it to the attention of administrators.

“What amazes me the most is that we are a Catholic school with the motto along the lines that we are all created in the image and likeness of God … I personally no longer feel safe in a place that is supposed to be one of the safest for a child,” she wrote in an email to Dean of Students Jim Fallis and Principal Kate Caputo in August 2015.

Caputo responded at the time that she was “eager to hear from all sides to better understand how this situation

came to fruition.”

According to Johnson, however, after she posted the email exchange on Twitter, she was “shamed into apologizing to administrators.”

“I, myself, the victim of racism, should have been coddled and supported by the administrators and, instead, I was gaslighted and felt like I did something wrong,” Johnson said in an interview.

Fallis, Caputo and Mitty President Tim Brosnan did not return multiple requests for comment from this news organization. But in an email to alumni on Thursday, the administrators said they “did not talk about race as we should have in the past, and this has been detrimental to not only our students of color but the wider Mitty community.”

“Although we recognize that discussions surrounding race are difficult, delicate, and often polarizing, we are committed to such discussions to ensure that racism will not be tolerated at Archbishop Mitty,” the email said.

Alumni at Mitty aren’t the only ones demanding changes in San Jose private schools in the wake of Floyd’s death and resounding calls for racial justice.

Ogechi Ajawara, a black alumna of Notre Dame San Jose, spoke out on Facebook earlier this week about the racism she said she was subjected to in high school, including a college counselor who discouraged her from writing about it out of fear it would make the school look bad.

“The administration is filled with weak and racist people who call all the POC students together whenever they need a photo for the school’s website. They only care about the image of the school, and that has been directly communicated to me for a long time,” she

wrote in the post that has since received more than 600 comments and 400 likes.

In a statement on its Facebook page later that day, Notre Dame addressed the Floyd killing for the first time since his death. “We call on all of us in the US to work with a great sense of urgency to eliminate systemic poverty and racism that is a part of our culture,” the school wrote in a social media post.

But in an interview Friday, Notre Dame Principal Mary Beth Riley said it has become “very clear” to her and her colleagues that their response “was not adequate.”

In response to concerns raised by Ajawara and other alumni, Riley said the school will form a task force on race, equity and inclusion, start providing training for teachers and faculty on issues of inequality and make a donation to the

Movement for Black Lives.

More than 500 alumni at Valley Christian Schools also banded together this week to write a list of 21 demands for the school system to make it more equitable. The demands include hiring more faculty members of color, implementing antibias and anti-aggression training for school personnel and strictly enforcing a zero-tolerance policy to racism and microaggressions.

“As alumni, we look back on our VCS experience and recognize that some VCS administrative policies and practices failed to acknowledge and care for the specific needs of Black students and failed to teach non-Black students how to love and respect their Black brothers and sisters,” they wrote in a letter to the school.

Administrators at Valley Christian Schools could not immediately be reached for comment Friday.