Hate Has No Home at Hancock: Students Create an Anti-Discrimination Policy to Push for Awareness & Safety
By Violeta Ponce-Maldonado
December 1, 2025
Last year, Hancock’s Student Council began drafting an Anti-Discrimination Policy focused on reinforcing a safe environment for students and staff. In CPS, there is already an anti-discrimination statement in place, which is reinforced in all CPS schools; however, Hancock wanted to take it a step further. The Student Voice Committee, part of Hancock’s Student Council, began drafting the school’s Anti-Discrimination Policy. This student-led initiative serves as an example of the importance of student voice and safety across schools.
While skeptical at first, Alexaudelia Mejia, a board member of Student Council, shared how her views shifted: “We never actually acknowledge it because we don't think it's that deep, but for them, like someone could be struggling behind their walls. And so I think it's very important to protect the students that are here.”
Discrimination has always been an issue, both inside and outside of schools. According to an article titled What Gets in the Way of Students Feeling a Sense of Belonging at School, “Students of all ages can struggle—academically and socially—if they don’t feel like they fit in at school. Younger children may exhibit signs of low self-esteem, while older students can develop mental health problems or become more at risk of dropping out of school altogether,” said Francesca Lopez, a professor of education at Penn State University.
Discrimination allows room for many problems; however, schools also have the opportunity to create solutions to improve the learning environment. In an article titled Bullying, hate speech in schools is already bad. It will worsen in the second Trump era, it discusses that “Educators in other states should look into their state’s anti-bullying policies and laws to see how they actually protect kids from hate speech — and advocate for stronger protection if needed.”
Today, in many state districts, there have been revisions to school anti-discrimination policies, removing key terms that could pose a threat to the future. According to an article titled Critics warn against change in Sarasota Co. School Board anti-discrimination policy, “Sarasota School Board members will consider repealing the district’s anti-discrimination policy and replacing it with new guidance based on direction from President Donald Trump’s administration. Critics worry the decision could lead to the destruction of legal protections for marginalized students and school employees across the state.”
Hancock stayed away from rewriting the original CPS anti-discrimination policy but focuses on ensuring more safety and accountability among students. According to Mejia, “There are people who can't speak up for themselves and who definitely get picked on, and it's hard to hold the people who pick on them accountable without a policy like this already in place,” she said when discussing the importance of the Anti-Discrimination Policy at Hancock.
After careful revision and editing, not only among the student body but also through administration, Hancock’s Anti-Discrimination Policy was published toward the end of the 2024–2025 school year.
Hancock's Anti-Discrimination Policy briefly states: “We, the student body, believe in ensuring safety, fairness, equality, and self-acceptance for our peers. In order to ensure these ideals, we need to develop a basis of mutual understanding, pride in one’s identity and culture, creating empathy, educating others, changing perceptions of stereotypes and misconceptions, being upstanders and not bystanders, and encouraging others to speak out against discrimination.”
This article was written in English 151, a dual-credit class with the City Colleges of Chicago available to juniors and seniors.