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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]WIS sounded like a hot mess to us when it comes to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging and they tried to hide behind being “international.” Their admissions person actually says that they like to have some percentage of non-international kids for the benefit of the international students and families - so they can feel connected to DC/USA. We heard nothing about why that would be good/positive for the non-international kids. Sounded a lot like white people saying they want a few but not too many POC around for the benefit of white people. We were totally turned off. We are UMC African-American.[/quote]

Yes. The school has been surprisingly (and increasingly) disastrous when it comes to handling DEI, both on a deeper level (whom they admit) and on an experiential level (celebrating differences, etc.) It used to be a school that truly had kids from all over the world, including the US. But over time, there seems to have been a choice to try to become more like the better private schools in the area and to homogenize the student body (racially and socio-economically).

Historically there were plenty of international non-white families who were interested in a school like WIS but over time, these families started making other choices. Even if you control for the fact that many international orgs no longer subsidize school costs for their employees, many of those families are still choosing to pay out of pocket for a private school - just not WIS as often as before. When you look at the link on their homepage about DEI that was posted previously, the changes they are implementing are fairly superficial. If the admissions continue to be heavily white, and kids have no diversity in their day-to-day student lives, then sending emails every week about what DEI activities are happening on campus is just box-ticking.[/quote]

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