At one point or another, everybody has to consider the question of identity. Everyone has to ask themselves who they are and where they belong. Whether it’s based on ethnicity, wealth, sexuality, or gender, discrimination and “othering” has made it difficult for people to be accepted for who they are.

NHS Student Ambassadors is a club focused on diversity and identity. Spanish teacher and club sponsor John Ayars was asked to start the club by the Noblesville Diversity Committee. The club is made up of around 20 students who have had two meetings over the course of the year during AL.

According to Ayars, a lot of students have never considered the question of their own identity. His goal is that Student Ambassadors serves as a way for students to explore that question.

“[Student Ambassadors is] a way of having the student body get involved in the process of looking at how we process identity and perspective as a school,” Ayars said.

Ayars says that identity is essential in order to understand the world we live in.

“It’s difficult to understand why the way that certain people talk, the rhetoric people use about different groups of people is hurtful if you are incapable of understanding the identity that they bring to the table,” Ayars said.

Ayars says that the first priority of Student Ambassadors is to make students aware of what’s going on at NHS regarding diversity and culture.

“From what I’ve heard, there’s an appetite that a lot of students want to talk about these issues,” Ayars said. “The goal is that, eventually, we’ll be equipped as a group to head out into the student body and have those conversations with other students.”

One student with that appetite is junior Jack Judy. Judy hopes that Student Ambassadors can bring a better sense of equality to NHS.

“We’re trying to make people aware of how we can change society to make it more equal and make it so that nobody feels discriminated against,” Judy said.

Another student who is interested in the issue of diversity is freshman Hiba Belkacemi.

“I am very passionate about kindness and about standing up for people,” Belkacemi said. “I want everybody to be accepted for who they are, and not be ashamed of who they are. The future, hopefully, is that people will accept each other no matter what.”

While Ayars’ focus right now is bringing awareness to the student body, he eventually wants to expand the club beyond that.

“The goal is that eventually the NHS Student Ambassadors isn’t a group that meets to talk about it amongst themselves, but rather becomes a group that goes and sponsors events and creates opportunities for events,”Ayars said. “Such that it’s not even raising awareness anymore, it’s bringing everyone to the table.”

Ayars says that it’s important to surround ourselves with people who have different beliefs than us so we can better understand the world we live in.

“[Diversity] is incredibly important because anytime that we do not have diversity we exist in the echo chamber that is our own views, and our own upbringing, and our own thought processes. We’re not bettering ourselves as people,” Ayars said. “We live in a world of more than eight billion people and all of those eight billion people have different thought processes about how the world works and how we understand things. If we don’t seek to see other people, and if we don’t have the opportunity to see other people, then we’re not going to be able to live in the world. It’s as simple as that.”