Social Justice Club seeks to strike down stereotypes through videos

As shown with the hashtag and subsequent social movement #BlackLivesMatter, social media can be a catalyst for change and can help bring awareness to problems in society. Social Justice Club wants to use social media to do just that.

The club’s video series “#BreakTheStereotype” will go online starting in November. According to club president senior Alvin Chung, the project is helping with club publicity and outreach, as well as being a “vehicle for marginalized groups to voice their opinions and experience.”

The plan originated from the officers’ worrying about the survival of the club this summer. Fearing that the club would cease to exist due to low attendance rates, treasurer senior Laira Bhurji came up with the idea this summer.

Additionally, Bhurji wanted Social Justice Club to make an actual impact on the school as well as attract underclassmen to eventually replace the current officers, who are all seniors. Last year, the club’s activities were limited to fundraisers and meetings.

“It’s so easy to just think about change, rather than act on it,” Bhurji said. “But personal videos and seeing someone’s face as they describe hardships or stereotypes thrust upon them by society is so much more impactful.”

The officers also hope to better themselves by combatting stereotypes that they also perpetuate or by learning of new perspectives.

“I can get to meet new people with experiences unfamiliar to me so I can learn from what they have to say,” Chung said.

Although the club will not start filming until after college early application deadlines, the videos will interview various students who break stereotypes. Chung hopes to mainly feature students who are LGBT, people of color or both.

Social Justice Club’s media coordinator, a position for which they are taking applications, will film the videos. They will then be uploaded by the Falcon’s head broadcast editor, senior Frederick Kim, onto the Falcon’s social media accounts.

The club’s adviser, English teacher Amy Keys, said that these videos are a continuation of the club’s typical discussions, which aim to break all kinds of stereotypes, including those about race, gender and sexuality.

She hoped that Social Justice Club’s videos can help students recognize when they are operating on unexamined assumptions about others, even when not actively discriminating.

“I don’t have to be actively racist, such as spraying swastikas or calling people the ‘n-word,’ to perpetuate stereotypes about others,” Keys said. “The students in Social Justice Club are helping us to examine others in all kinds of ways.”