By By ERIKA PICKLES / Niles Daily Star
NILES – Students at Ring Lardner Middle School got a chance to Mix It Up during lunch on Tuesday. Instead of sitting with their normal group of friends, students had to sit with people they usually wouldn't, giving them a chance to get to know someone outside of their group of friends.
Mix It Up Day is part of a national program directed to fighting hate and promoting tolerance. A total of four million students in 10,000 schools across the United States participate in the event, with Ring Lardner being one of them.
"The goal of this is to spend time with people the students don't know and appreciate each other," assistant principal Wayne Borr said. "Different students belong to different groups. It was that way when I was in school and it will continue to be that way. Mix It Up gives our students a chance to look outside the box and meet someone who they may not have considered associating with."
Before students had lunch, they were given stickers with different colors on them. In all, there were 14 different tables and 14 different colored stickers. Students had to sit at their assigned tables and have lunch with others sitting with them. After they were finished eating, all students were given a piece of paper with questions on them and had to ask someone sitting next to them the questions.
Tye Cheney and Tara Smith said they both "kind of" knew each other, but never really talked before Tuesday.
"This gives you a chance to meet new people," Cheney said.
"And you get to know things about someone you didn't know," Smith added.
While there are a lot of positives that come out of Mix It Up Day, both Smith and Cheney said negatives can also arise.
"It may be hard for some people to sit by others they don't know because it might be awkward," Cheney said.
Smith added that it could make some people uncomfortable.
"This is the second year doing this and we hope to continue to do it in the future. Before this, students were given lessons in class about diversity and they were asked if they could identify the different "cliques" in the school. They drew maps, made surveys and were asked questions about what can be done to break down the wall on the different groups," Borr said.