On Nov. 12, an APB student used a racial slur during a campus tour at Cal State Dominguez Hills, leading the university to ban APB from future tours.

Mr. Reed found himself dealing with the aftermath of the incident, receiving calls from Dominguez Hills who got the campus police department involved as well. 

Mr. Reed said, “I got a call from Dominguez Hills, letting us know that they got a bunch of reports from different people at the college that our students have been disruptive, including using the N word.” 

Later on in the interview, there was a better understanding of how impactful it was to him and the APB community and which led many curious as to what his initial reaction was. Many students expected him to be on the furious side, but in reality, he explained that he was feeling multiple emotions at once.

“I was very sad, I was angry, frustrated, disappointed, yeah, the whole range of feelings,” Mr. Reed said. 

Reed started taking action and initiative towards the situation two weeks after it happened. He explained the steps he was going to take to remedy this incident. The idea came up to survey all staff to dig deeper on how common it is to hear the n-word around campus. 

“Me (Mr.Reed), Ms. Edelman, and Mr. Carballo kind of worked on some draft ideas with the staff. Yesterday, we had them complete the survey.’’

In the survey that staff had to do, 52.5% of staff hear students say the n-word multiple times a day. Moreover, he was asked what are the main key takeaways to avoid complex setbacks such as this incident. 

Additionally, Mr.Nevarez, an English teacher at Animo Pat Brown participated in the survey and shared his thoughts. 

“I was surprised by the results, it was surprising to see how many teachers hear it and how little we do when hearing that word” Mr. Nevarez said. 

Students also are impacted from this situation because they will receive consequences if they say the n word. So some students share their thoughts on how they feel about the use of  the n-word.

“I think it’s wrong, people shouldn’t use it because it’s so engraved in their vocabulary they think it’s okay to use it, especially because of the environment they live in they think it’s okay to say it.” Carlos Robles, a senior in Animo Pat Brown. 

The purpose of the survey, said reed, was to better understand the issue on campus and get data on how it impacts our school community. 

Mr. Reed- “things that we do have an impact. And so there’s a difference between your intentions and your impact.”