Impact at Home

Katherine Swenson, senior, is the first female president of HHS DECA since Mr. Jesse Theirl, Business Education, began advising the club eight years ago.

“To me, it illustrates this ingrained idea that males are more suitable for positions of power, especially in the professional world,” Swenson said.

Swenson, who is also the School Board Representative for Student Government, believes that social issues like rape culture can often be polarizing and easily misinterpreted.

“It’s difficult to easily quantify things like rape culture, because social awareness movements are often misinterpreted by people who take the extreme edges and use them as the popular definition of that movement,” Swenson said.

Johnson noted that every student should enter the classroom feeling as if their opinions matter.

“I want kids of all races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, socioeconomic statuses, and religions to feel respected, accepted, and valued for the experiences they bring in and that filter through their day,” Johnson said. “That’s why I spend so much time working with staff to create responsive classrooms.”

Johnson and the HHS administration work to create “responsive classrooms” by bringing in experts.

“It’s not just staff who create positive culture here, because students have just as much responsibility. That’s why we conduct activities and bring in experts – to talk about the culture of the building, how students are feeling, and then what the students can do,” Johnson said.

Swenson distinguished rape culture, particularly, as something extremely deep-seated in everyday life.

“To me, [rape culture] is so ingrained that people don’t notice it,” Swenson said. “It’s similar to the way in which a fish doesn’t notice it’s in water.”