CYPRESS : Students Embrace Tolerance Training

Students at Cypress High School have warmly embraced tolerance-learning sessions designed to help ease racial strife, according to an official of the Orange County Human Relations Commission.

“The students have been incredibly wonderful at Cypress,” said Swinder Cooper, a commission staff member who has been working with the high school. “The students are interested, committed and passionate about these (diversity) issues.”

The commission, at the request of city and school officials, has been working with Cypress High students in the wake of off-campus racial strife among some students last fall.

Cooper said the commission today is holding a second retreat for a Cypress High students. About 30 students, all volunteers and representing many ages, backgrounds and ethnic groups, will meet with human relations staff members for all-day sessions on tolerance and understanding.

Cooper said the commission held a similar retreat last month. The sessions help the young people learn more about diversity, she said.

“We look at stereotypes, look at prejudices, look at discrimination, and we end it on a positive note about social responsibility,” said Cooper. “We teach students ways they can make a difference in their own lives and at school.”

The county Human Relations Commission has sponsored other sessions at many other high schools throughout the county, said Rusty Kennedy, commission executive director.

He said that with a changing population, “there’s not a school in the county that doesn’t have a problem (involving tolerance) of some sort.”