Campaign Dialogue, South’s climate and culture team, has been crucial in improving the student environment year after year, and plays a significant role in maintaining South’s welcoming nature.
Campaign Dialogue advisor Ms. Chelsea Allen explained that the purpose of the team was essentially to ask, “What does South feel like through the student lens?”
The team was originally a district collaboration with an external organization called Campaign Connect. Ms. Allen said that they worked on “collecting student data, analyzing it, understanding what this information tells us, and what we need to do about it.”
Campaign Connect also ran a one day program called “Day of Dialogue,” where high schools in Mercer County met at Rider University. They discussed topics that would traditionally be hard to talk about, such as the use of racial slurs in schools.
After four years of working with the organization, in 2016, Campaign Dialogue reinvented itself as an independent, South-based team by merging ideas from Campaign Connect and Day of Dialogue.
The team has since worked together on many big projects. One example is the student-made teacher handbook that incorporated social topics such as helping students deal with academic stress and peer pressure. It was created during the pandemic and distributed to all South faculty members.
Campaign Dialogue’s most recent project is the HSS Student Answers Website which went live in February 2024. It was made specifically for South students to gain easier access to important resources, such as the teacher directory, clubs list, and much more.
“When it comes down to it, almost every student cares about what this place feels like because, whether it’s ours or our peers’, it’s our daily experience,” said Ms. Allen.
“Anybody can join Campaign Dialogue and be committed to what we’re doing because it impacts everybody’s experience.”
Students can join by connecting with Ms. Allen through her school email or filling out the form on the HSS Student Answers website. The team meets every D day in Room 81 during lunch.
