Junior Callia Blake expressed her desire to design a class devoted to race because she said she believes will be a safe space to talk about controversial topics.

She said she feels Park lacks a proper environment to inform students about race and hopes this class will become reality.

“I think it’s important because I feel like a lot of our student body isn’t informed about race, and it affects so much of our student body,” Blake said.

At a past SOAR (Student Organization Against Racism) meeting, Blake said the club discussed what it wanted the new class to look like.

“We were just trying to brainstorm some ideas about what we want to talk about in that class, kind of create a curriculum and decide how we want it to be structured,” Blake said.

According to adviser Peter Redmond, a class regarding race would differ from any other class existing at Park. He said the club envisions a one semester elective class that encompasses discussions regarding race.

“A lot of classes have a unit on race relations, whether it’s criminal justice or history,” Redmond said. “But, we do not have a class that focuses (solely) on race relations.”

Blake said she hopes the class consists of topics not currently discussed in classes at school.

“We want to talk about how beauty is really Eurocentric and it’s based on European ideals,” Blake said. “We wanted to talk about institutionalized racism in the country and in school systems in general.”

According to Blake, club members distributed surveys to all lunches in order to receive feedback about the new class SOAR hopes to create.

“The ones that we got back asking if they would like a class like this were pretty positive and think this would be a cool idea,” Blake said.

Blake said she envisions the club as a mix of students sharing their experiences.

“It’s hopefully going to be a really modge-podge group,” Blake said.

Scott said she believes this new class would help students by offering a safe place to discuss race relations.

Sophomore Kinsey Scott shows great interest when hearing about the new class the SOAR club wants to create.

“I would join it because I think changing the way we feel about race is important in school especially,” Scott said. “It’s very important to student minds and how teachers treat students too.”

The next meeting takes place 8:10 a.m. Nov. 12 in the Learning Lab.