Day of Unity Conference brings high school students together to inspire change
From left: Jenna Hammoudo, Aqsa Asif, Fatanah Sarwayi and Taylor DeFranco, all 11th-graders at Herricks High School, were among those at the Day of Unity Conference at Walt Whitman High School in Huntington Station on Friday.
Credit: Rick Kopstein
Students from several school districts sparked a dialogue about religion and coalition-building as part of an interfaith and cross-cultural Day of Unity Conference at Walt Whitman High School in Huntington Station on Friday.
“How do you guys set aside any differences?” one student asked a local Jewish rabbi and Muslim pediatrician who became friends.
Another student inquired, “What does a day of celebrating Ramadan look like?”
The conference was hosted by the school’s Muslim Student Association.
From the morning to early afternoon, nearly 100 students from schools districts such as Roslyn, Westbury, Herricks and South Huntington listened intently in the school's auditorium as they heard from Sikh, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim speakers, as well as a journalist and a leader of a civil rights group.
Many of the students were in the Muslim Student Association organization at different schools. Students explored how they can create change, including efforts toward making a Muslim holiday a school holiday. They also focused on creating a more accepting climate for peers of different faiths and backgrounds, officials say.
Senior Zahra Choudry, co-founder of Walt Whitman’s Muslim Student Association, hopes students will learn about different cultures and lead with more humanity in their dealings with others.
“We kind of just want to educate this wide variety of students about different cultures, different ethnicities, the role that our identity plays and discriminatory practices that we can avoid so that these students can go out after today and perhaps come out a little bit more educated,” said Choudry, 17.
Although her district has supported her, Choudry, who is Muslim and was born in Pakistan, said she had experienced hurtful comments that claimed her academic achievements were attributed to her background.
This event, she said, will help students see diversity as a strength instead of using it as a “divisive tactic.”
Kristen Bradle, a social studies teacher at Walt Whitman and an adviser to the school’s Muslim Student Association, said she hopes students will leave with a better understanding of why “some of the difficult situations they've had to deal with exist.”
“It's all about gearing them up to face these … real world issues and providing them with experiences like this where they can learn from a very diverse group of people,” said Bradle, who is Catholic.
Junior Hawa Halimi, a student at Walt Whitman and member of the school’s association, said one part of the conference taught her about similarities between the Jewish and Muslim calendars.
“That was something that I didn't know before, so it was nice,” Halimi, 17, said.
Several students spent most of the school year researching to pull off the conference, which is in its second year. Throughout the day, students heard from speakers from the Interfaith Institute of Long Island, members of the Huntington Anti-Bias Task Force and others.
“We are all putting a lot of hope in your generation because things are pretty difficult right now and we're really hoping that there'll be a lot of energy from younger people coming up,” Kehillath Shalom Synagogue Rabbi Lina Zerbarini, a member of the Huntington Anti-Bias Task Force, told the students.
When NAACP Long Island regional director Tracey Edwards spoke to the students, she asked them, “How many of you have been subjected to, or knew someone personally, that experienced hate?”
Most hands in the crowd shot up.
Edwards said she wanted students to recognize their organizing power.
“I really believe that if they were to stay connected and to identify issues that are important to them,” she said, “they can drive change.”
Education: Howard University
Tiffany Cusaac-Smith came to Newsday in 2023 after being a race and history reporter at USA TODAY, where she wrote enterprise and spot articles examining how the past shapes the present. Previously, she worked as the race and justice reporter at the USA TODAY Network of New York, covering issues such as criminal justice reform, housing, environmental justice, health care and politics. At The Journal News/lohud.com in Westchester County, she covered Yonkers, the state's third-largest city. She also worked at The Associated Press in Atlanta.
Honors and Awards: Criminal justice reporting fellowship with the National Press Foundation; New York News Publishers Association award for distinguished investigative reporting; Contributed reporting for Best of Gannett honor; Member of Table Stakes, a program funded by the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund and managed by the American Press Institute to transform local news.
