Field day at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South draws students who do not normally interact
By: Nick Norlen
WEST WINDSOR Friday was the first time West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South senior Ben Rose had participated in the school’s annual Unity Day.
He said he got involved because he had heard good things.
"It’s with all grades and random people, so you make new friends," he said. "And I’m always up for a good game of capture the flag."
And who isn’t?
Maybe that’s why the event designed as a field day to bring together students of different backgrounds is in its seventh year.
But according to participants, it’s something more.
Former High School South student Warren Schaeffer, now 22 and attending Rider University, founded the event.
He was back Friday as he is every year to see what has become of his idea.
"I’m proud to say it’s my legacy," he said. "I definitely hope it continues and I’m going to be here every year it comes."
Mr. Schaeffer, who was part of the school’s special needs program at the time, said he started the event to overcome "the stigma and misconceptions" of students who are different.
He said he thought of the day was a way of "giving the so-called mainstream students a look of what we have to go though on a daily basis, and so they could get an understanding of how to learn to get to know one another and work together and hopefully maybe become friends."
Seven years later, organizers now work to involve students from different "academic backgrounds, social backgrounds, and physical backgrounds," said event advisor Stacy Gasper, a special services teacher at the school.
Ms. Gasper said that although diversity is celebrated as an important concept in schools, Mr. Schaeffer’s idea gave the students a chance to experience it on a tangible level.
"It seems like such a simple idea, but the first step is getting people together," she said. "We’re trying to get them not really to recognize because I think they do recognize the diversity, but to remind them how important it is to not only appreciate the differences, but to celebrate the similarities."
Event advisor Caryn Vlassenko, a High School South math teacher, said more students approximately 275 were involved this year than any other.
She explained that students are recommended by teachers and then given invitations to participate.
"We don’t just tell them to recommend the kids who are necessarily the leaders in the school," she said. "What I’ve noticed here is that a lot of unlikely people emerge as the leaders."
In the same way, she said the day gives students who don’t normally interact an excuse to get together and hopefully see each other as more than one of the many labels students sometimes live with in high school.
"I just think it’s a great program to have kids working with each other and building those relationships that they can’t do in the classroom," she said. "They meet people that they may not meet inside the school."
Kelly Fischer, a junior at High School South, has been involved all three of her years at the school.
"It’s something I really believe in because my family has a lot of special needs people, and this is trying to break the mold between people of different learning abilities, different cultures just being different," she said. "And it’s supposed to merge us all together and make us one and everything."
Mr. Schaeffer said he has seen the proof that it works: Kids from different backgrounds becoming friends after the day is over.
"They want to get to know them more on a personal level," he said.
And when that happens, their various differences become irrelevant, he said.
"It doesn’t really matter," he said.