AMBERLEY VILLAGE — On the same day that negotiations began for the racial profiling lawsuit against Cincinnati, 85 students from 15 high schools gathered to promote diversity and understanding.

        Students from Greater Cincinnati private and public schools on Wednesday examined how gender identity unites people of different ethnic and racial groups at the eighth annual Hands Across the Campus workshops at Isaac M. Wise Temple.

        Led by Christopher Kraus, an attorney who started the Troubadours Education Teen Theater, and Anthony Davis, a community trainer for the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission, students shared personal experiences and created a “gender expanding” exercise to take back to each school.

        “I learned about the stereotypes about men, how men are supposed to be cold and insensitive, from the girls,” said Shamar Borders, a sophomore at St. Xavier High School, an all-boys school in Finneytown, and a member of St. Xavier's HAC group. “I learned that I'm not that type of man.”

        Though this year's topic was gender identity, the HAC, started in Los Angeles in the 1980s by the international American Jewish Committee, aims to combat all prejudice in secondary schools across the nation.

        Last year, HAC, which has programs in more than 20 Cincinnati schools, had a workshop on racial and age profiling in March, one month before Cincinnati's racial unrest.Some schools, such as St. Xavier, have specific HAC groups while others, such as Princeton High School, use HAC training to influence school culture.

        Barbara Glueck, executive director of the Cincinnati chapter of the American Jewish Committee, said that HAC's most valuable asset is that it provides a support network for students and teachers who are trying to change the way others think.

        St. Ursula junior Bethany Scott, 17, has been a HAC member since she was a freshman. She says the group offers her a chance to voice opinions about being a racial and gender minority and helps her expand awareness of minority issues.

        “That's the whole purpose of being here — making a difference in the world,” she said.

        To learn more about Hands Across the Campus, call 621-4020.

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