Aoki Seminar Fall 2019 "The Over Policing of Students of Color and Innovative Methods of Resistance " _11/19/2019

The Over Policing of Students of Color and Innovative Methods of Resistance Improve Your Tomorrow (IYT), Sacramento Area Youth Speaks (SAYS), & Students from King Hall's Restorative Justice Practicum This event will be an informal dialogue focusing on the overwhelming disciplinary disparities concerning students of color. Across the nation, students of color and particularly black students, are disciplined more often and the punitive measures they face are more severe. Additionally, in schools they are more likely to be referred to police and get involved in the juvenile justice system for routine misbehavior. These traditional approaches for disciplining students not only disproportionately target brown and black students, but they also fail to address the underlying issues that are the cause conflict: ie poverty, lack of agency, and other peer/social pressures that students deal with on a daily basis. This is where Restorative Justice comes in. First, popularized by studying conflict resolution tactics of indigenous communities from the Americas to South Africa and New Zealand. Here in America, Restorative Justice approaches have been adopted by cities, school districts, and legal practitioners as an alternative form of conflict resolution. Here at UC Davis, Professor Frampton and students from the Restorative Justice Practicum have worked to support/initiate these alternative conflict resolution strategies to the communities surrounding King Hall. Staff employees at Improve Your Tomorrow (IYT) and Sacramento Area Youth Speaks (SAYS), organizations that support students of color in Sacramento schools, will explain their own strategies in fighting these disparities; in addition, the UC Davis Restorative Justice Practicum will provide a brief overview of alternative methods to solve conflict, and the impact of restorative justice in the school system.