Leah Yao ’15: “SDLC is an experience I will never forget.” This phrase, or variants of it, can be heard from any individual who attended this year’s Student Diversity Leadership Conference, which was held in Houston. Nine EA students and several teachers represented Episcopal at this year’s conference, which was designed to give attendees an experience outside a normal school environment, in which differences are accepted and admired rather than stereotyped and segregated.
The purpose of the trip according to Lolo Lomax ’14 was to “Become fully aware of all aspects of diversity,” as well as to “help us become more aware of who we are.”
For VI Form Dean Sarah Baker, one of the teachers who attended, SDLC was a “time and opportunity to engage with my own thoughts about how far this community has come with respect to diversity and how far it still has to go.”
The trip involved many different activities to help the attendees understand diversity. One such activity is known as “Fishbowl,” an exercise in which students identify themselves with the seven personal identifiers: socio-economic status, sexual orientation, gender, race, religion, age, and ability. This activity was intended to show the attendees the diversity within each group at the conference, and on a larger scale, within the global community.
While there were unique people at the conference, many of the Episcopal attendees noted that there was also a distinctive atmosphere. Lomax explained that it was a place where “everyone acknowledged me even if they didn’t know me.” Maria Burke ’14 added, “The conversations you have with people are different and interesting.”
Leigh Adelizzi ’15, an attendee of the previous trip, explained that life at EA is “in the bubble,” but at SDLC there “is no bubble.”
One of the things that Erin Johnson ’15 gained out of this experience was a “network of friends who [she] can talk to and are understanding.” Johnson stressed that SDLC not only included learning about diversity but also was “about the connections you make with the people there.”
All the students who went to SDLC agreed that after coming home, they wanted to go back to the conference immediately. However, they were all able to bring back experiences and an understanding about diversity from the conference.
Lomax shared that she realized, “It’s necessary to be yourself, be fine with all the things you are and to suspend judgment of people based on differences.”
The many lessons learned at the conference can be integrated back into the EA community. Baker would like Episcopal to “take a hard look at who the insiders and who the outsiders are—broadly and in small groups, even as small as the classroom or within the faculty.” She felt that “If we can identify outsiders, we need to make it our purpose that they feel critical to the fabric of our institution. Not just accepted or included, but instrumental.” All the attendees this year encourage students to go next year and contribute what they’ve learned to EA. Baker concluded that she would recommend the conference to all members of the EA community because “It is about celebrating difference, which means it celebrates all of us.”

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