One of the many wonderful aspects of Glenbrook South High School is its rich and diverse ethnic atmosphere. Sure, the majority of students fall under the “white” category, but compared to other North Shore schools we have a fairly diverse group of students and with that comes a fairly diverse group of languages.

I’m sure you’ve had this experience before: you are wandering down the hall to one of your classes and you pass a group of students that all appear to be from the same ethnicity talking amongst themselves in some foreign language. It can almost be fun, if you know the language, to catch snippets of their conversation as you pass by. You may feel uncomfortable however, if you do pass by and they happen to be looking in your general direction, laughing and pointing in a mocking manner.

It makes me jealous, because I wish I too had some secret code I could talk to all my friends in. Unfortunately though, I fall under that common “white” mold, with absolutely no family culture besides being from some part of almost every European county.

A remedy to this dilemma comes by taking a foreign language here at GBS, some of which fall under the category of those “secret codes” spoken around the hallways. I, myself, have taken three years of Spanish, and coincidentally been able to understand fair amounts of Spanish conversations spoken around me both in the halls and outside of school. In fact, I had a recent experience in one of my classes where I was able to pick up on a conversation spoken in Spanish. This time I wasn’t merely eavesdropping on someone talking about their last shopping trip or how they can’t wait to get their hair done this coming Saturday… No, this time I overheard someone talking about me and some other students sitting nearby.

It’s an extremely awkward feeling, when you know they think you can’t understand what they’re saying, but are in fact hanging on their every word. After class, I couldn’t help myself, and I confronted that group of people. I wasn’t angry or mean about it, I just pointed out that it probably wasn’t the best idea to talk about others right in front of them in a language that is taken by a large portion of the school. Surprisingly, the culprits responded defensively, saying I was being “racist” in telling them that they were not allowed to speak Spanish at school.
On the contrary, I have absolutely no problem with them speaking their native language, as I have expressed before (in fact, I wish I too could take part in that luxury). I just think that when it is a language as common as Spanish, you shouldn’t treat it as though no one will be able to pick up on your conversation by using it to talk trash about the people around you.

So go ahead, speak in your language all you want, I have absolutely no problem with a little diversity in the classroom. I can’t control what you choose to talk about, but I would caution anyone that partakes in this habit that you should keep your conversation topics to what you wouldn’t mind saying in English… Because there are people that may understand, and it just might be the person sitting right behind you.

Sylvia Uhl, illustrations editor