North Cook News

The Equity Analyst of Evanston Township High School District 202, who also serves as the assistant to the district's new superintendent, is organizing the district's "Social Consciousness" series and said at the most recent school board meeting that she enjoys putting students into groups to discuss marginalized identities.

Lauren Hamilton is Evanston Township High School (ETHS) District 202's equity analyst, leading the district's Social Consciousness series, according to Evanston Roundtable. Hamilton is also an assistant to Dr. Marcus Campbell, the district's new superintendent, who is replacing Eric Witherspoon.

"The Social Consciousness series, in short, is work that our entire community is invested in to improve a sense of belonging at ETHS among our students who have marginalized identities, specifically students who have racial and ethnic marginalized identities," Hamilton said at the school board meeting. "And so I do want to say, firstly, that this work would not exist without the labor of love that our black and brown educators have been leading for decades at ETHS and without the support of our administrators and our board." 

Hamilton went on to explain the Social Consciousness series.

"And so over the last several years, this series has grown to include community events. We've had events for parents, but most importantly, our students are at the center of what we do here," she said. "We are about the work of beloved community, building relationships and providing opportunities for students to connect with each other as they explore their identity, build healthy identities, and have conversations about the implications of some of these identities that we hold and these social constructs that we know have very real implications for how we move throughout society. So that's the general purpose of the Social Consciousness series."

"I would say some of the most exciting parts of the series for me as an organizer is working with students to pull off our summits," she said. 

The ETHS Social Consciousness Series is one of the district's equity initiatives, according to its website. The program groups students into various "summits," which include a Black Student Summit, a Latinx Student Summit, an LGBTQIA+ Student Summit, and a Middle Eastern, North African, and Asian (MENAA) Student Summit. The series offers presentations such as “Becoming Antiracist: Interrogating and Decentering Whiteness" and “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.”

Last school year, Hamilton collected a salary of $67,655 from ETHS, according to govsalaries.com.