By Billie Nagy
It’s been a tremendous year for student start-up clubs at Tempe Prep! Last fall, juniors and seniors successfully created the Environmental and Herstory clubs, and to even further the excitement, seniors Kathy Riffle, Erin Guiney, and Ariana Cardoso have taken up the challenge to start another fantastic club. They call it the H.O.P.E. Crew.
HOPE Crew, which stands for Honoring Others’ Perspectives Equally, as Kathy explains, is determined to promote “respect, tolerance, and community through volunteer work and school-wide awareness.” Though the HOPE Crew was actually founded several years ago but wasn’t continued after those students graduated. This school year the club had somewhat of a rocky start. As the seniors were originally unable to begin a GSA (Gay-Straight alliance), they turned their attention back to the idea of “reinstating the HOPE Crew as a more multifaceted safe space with the aim of informing and educating fellow students on a variety of issues that may face discrimination based on a lack of understanding,” as Erin describes.
The HOPE Crew’s general goal is to “establish unity at TPA,” says Ariana. So far, they’ve already begun watching TED Talks exploring the harms of Islamophobia and other forms of religious and racial discrimination, created Martin Luther King Jr. posters and placed them around the school “to promote love, acceptance, and just action,” as Kathy notes.
They will soon hold two fundraisers: one for Syrian refugees and one for the Flint, Michigan water crisis.
When asked why the club holds significance to her, Kathy sagely remarks, “From Rousseau, we learned that language is required for developing ideas. HOPE Crew is important to me because I want to provide a language for students to be able to understand themselves, and in spreading awareness, promote support and information.” The more students that join, she says, “the more unified and understanding TPA will become.”
If you’re interested in joining, come check out the HOPE Crew, meeting Mondays at high school lunch in Room 203.