On Jan. 3, Principal Paul Barker sent out a survey to all students and faculty about diversity.  Barker used survey monkey and by Thursday Jan. 6, 281 people had responded.

“We want to be able to celebrate our students’ heritage,” Principal Paul Barker said. “We are who we are.”

The survey asked students if they were eligible for citizenship in another country, if they were a US citizen, and if their parents were born somewhere besides the US.

According to Barker, some JC students have citizenship in countries such as Ireland, Germany, Canada, Korea, the Philippines, Nigeria, and New Zealand.  JC students also have parents born in countries such as India, Sri Lanka, Korea, Cuba, Haiti, Chad, Australia, Ethiopia, and England.

Both of junior Amanda Weerasooriya’s parents were born in Sri Lanka.  “I feel like my parents are still kind of getting use to the ‘American’ culture,” Weerasooriya said.

Senior Dambi “Catherine” Ko is pleased to have her heritage recognized by JC. Ko is Korean and has been attending JC since her freshman year.

“It’s nice that they are recognizing everybody’s heritage,” Ko said.

Still, not everyone was in favor of the diversity survey.  “I thought [the diversity survey] was unnecessary,”  junior Scott Novak said.  “The school is just trying to be politically correct but it just comes off looking bad.  I mean, where people come from shouldn’t matter as long as they make the most of their opportunities.”

“We’re really happy to have international students,” said Barker.  JC has 13 Korean students and three Cameroonian students. They also welcomed three German students for a semester.

The survey also was used to raise awareness of the cultural diversity present at JC.

“[Having a diverse student body] helps us have a global perspective and prepare our students in some small way for the reality outside of school,” Barker said.

Barker will take the survey’s results and then display flags of each country that students have citizenship in or that students’ parents were born in.

Meg Kirchner can be reached for comment at [email protected].