Artemis Center board members Lucy Williams (’25) and Sophia Shin (’25) host the first ArtemisEngage event Friday, Feb. 9. Students and faculty discussed a piece of current legislation addressing schools’ roles in communicating students’ changes to gender identity to their families. Photo by Archer Communications.

According to the Harvard Kennedy School, “Civil discourse isn’t just about polite conversation. It’s a vital ingredient to better public policy and public leadership.” To further implement this “ingredient” into the Archer community, Artemis Center board members Sophia Shin (’25) and Lucy Williams (’25) hosted the first ArtemisEngage event Friday, Feb. 9.

The new ArtemisEngage program is a community discourse series where students and faculty discuss current events with one another. The event uses a rounds-based system to navigate the discussion. Around 16 students and faculty members attended the discussion, which took place in Director of the Artemis Center Beth Gold’s classroom.

Using the knowledge she gained through a civil discourse workshop she attended over the summer at the University of Chicago, Williams introduced the program’s format. After participants viewed a piece of current legislation, the first round began, and students and faculty were asked to share their thoughts on it. In the second round, Shin and Williams presented prompts for attendees to discuss regarding the subject. Finally, during the third round, attendees shared what they learned from the event.

Shin said the purpose of the program is to nurture open-mindedness and to educate the community on current events.

“We want to put an emphasis on it being more of a conversation than a debate because our intent is not to create conflict, but to have people find common ground and understand other perspectives while developing their own during these discussions,” Shin said.

Gold guided Shin and Williams in planning their topic of discussion for the event. Gold said she suggested they find a topic that would appeal to and connect with students but wouldn’t be too polarizing.

Taking Gold’s advice into consideration, Shin and Williams decided on Assembly Bill 1314 as the topic of discussion. As stated by California Legislative Information, Assembly Bill 1314 is an amended California bill that would “provide that a parent or guardian has the right to be notified in writing within 3 days from the date any … employee of the school becomes aware that a pupil is identifying at school as a gender that does not align with the child’s sex.”

Gold said she was thrilled when Shin and Williams initially told her about their plans for ArtemisEngage because of its alignment with the Artemis Center’s mission.

“By creating conversation around and educating about civic affairs, this event is exactly the kind of role that the Artemis center wants to play at Archer,” Gold said. “I suggested they start with this piece of legislation because [many students] are going to be voters and by thinking about issues that we can learn more to be more educated voters, it makes us more active in our community and civic engagement is what the Artemis Center is all about.”

Shin and Williams said they crafted the program with the Artemis Center’s mission statement in mind, which is to educate others on the importance of service and activism while also empowering students to advocate and contribute to the greater good. 

“We’re focused on activism, and a large part of activism is awareness and education of the community,” Shin said. “It’s really difficult to actually enact change if you don’t have an educated student population who are aware of the problems in our world.”

Artemis Center board member Olivia Hallinan-Gan (‘26) attended the ArtemisEngage discussion. She described the dynamic between students and faculty throughout the event.

“The event was really amazing. It was something that I hadn’t really seen before this ArtemisEngage civil discourse took place,” Hallinan-Gan said. “I didn’t participate as much as I wanted to, but I listened and watched what was happening. Seeing teachers and students interact in an equal environment where they were on the same level was super interesting and cool to see.”

Gold reflected on the energy of the room and said she looks forward to watching the program grow.

“I loved the intimate space that we had today, but I hope it flourishes and that more people come and engage,” Gold said. “I hope that hosting these conversations will be a permanent feature of the Artemis Center and a signature program at Archer.”

While the ArtemisEngage program began with civil discourse on current events, Shin said she and Williams plan on expanding it into a multifaceted program where students present about current events from their unique perspectives.

“In the future, we want to create something that follows the format of a TED Talk series where people can come to short presentations and then discuss after,” Shin said. “It would integrate people’s individual interests and allow them to promote their voice while getting the community involved as well. We’re really excited to see how [the program] grows because we’ve put a lot of work into it. We’re hoping that people walk away from our events with an enlightened opinion.”