A message from Head of School, Dr. Jennifer Bigelow:

Here at Visitation, we have been blessed with outstanding programming in several areas. Last week, SOCS (Students of Color Society) led a convocation for students in grades 3-12 to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. The event had speakers from faculty, staff, and students share about their culture with the theme "what brings me joy." We heard from young students talk about the food of their culture, we heard from alums/teachers who shared about their ability to travel in Spanish-speaking countries, and we heard a beautiful poem in English and Spanish from an Upper School student about the joy of the Spanish language.

The SOCS invited a guest speaker to also share about what brings her joy. The speaker presented for approximately 10 minutes. As she told me later, her poetry is what brings her joy. Unfortunately, many of the words and themes in her poetry did not align to our values. The language, tone were not appropriate for the audience. I apologize for this error.

After debriefing the incident with the division directors, we recognize that there were several failures in our process that could have prevented the errors. Notably, Visitation has not had a guest speaker policy in place. Effective immediately, a policy has been established with clear guidelines for speakers that include a script or slides of their presentations, vetting of their ability to present to our audiences, and that their presentation is in alignment with our Salesian Catholic values.

With all things, we learn from our mistakes, and it is important to take ownership of the failures. I apologize for this incident and will endeavor to ensure that we do not have this situation happen again.