Diversity is very important to our coverage in The Orator especially since our student body is diverse. The racial demographics of Bryan High break down to:

• Hispanic/Latino 68.10%
  
• White 13.50%
  
• Black or African American 12.6%
• Two or More Races 3.30%
• Asian or Pacific Islander 1.70%
• American Indian or Alaska Native 0.90%

All three years I've been on staff with The Orator our staff makeup has been very diverse in nearly all aspects. I've continued to ensure that the newsroom was a safe place for our staff members to share anything they feel. 

I was shown the importance of diversity when I attended the AAJA JCamp in the summer of 2022. Here I heard from many industry leaders about the lack of diversity in the industry. Often they were the only person of color in the newsroom and they couldn't fully express themselves because of it. 

Localizing national issues can be difficult sometimes but I was able to do it with this topic. Gender identity within schools is a controversial topic in itself. At the time Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson joined a lawsuit with 19 other states suing the Biden Administration over anti-discrimination laws specifically about gender identity.

Instead of just writing a straight news story about the lawsuit which would frankly bore some readers I decided to do a more analytical approach and see how schools around my community handled this issue. I found that these public school districts in Omaha were on a wide spectrum on how they handled gender identity. Most didn't have any formal policy but they've said they would work with the students. I found three school districts had policies on the books about gender identity. Gretna had a policy that was the opposite of Bellevue and Omaha Public Schools. BPS and OPS staff would refer to students by their preferred names and pronouns while Grenta required parental consent.