Wiscasset Middle School student Ryan Medina had not seen any overt signs of discrimination since moving to Maine last year – until he found swastikas and KKK symbols painted on pump station tanks on the Old Bath Road. After finding the symbols, he called the town office to make sure they would be removed.

Then he called the pump station manager, who told Medina the symbols would soon be painted over. The next day Medina rode his bike back down to the pump station tanks and saw that the symbols were gone.

“We're here trying to tell people discrimination is bad and wrong,” Medina said. Medina is in the eighth grade and a member of the school's Civil Rights Team. There are two teams at the school, one for grades five and six, and one for grades seven and eight.

Medina moved from Ocean City, Md., a very different culture from his new Maine home. Discrimination was much more evident in Maryland. He recalled incidents in which children would not let his African American friend participate in neighborhood games.

“They would let me play,” he said. “But not my friend, because he was black, and I didn't really like that.”

Medina was also a member of his Maryland school's Civil Rights Team last year. He said he wants to end discrimination and hopes others will be inspired to take action against hate.

“You're basically telling people you care about them,” he said of civil rights. Those rights mean not holding any bias against others for what they are unable to change, such as race and gender, said guidance counselor Rachael Bennett.

The middle school's Civil Rights Team has been trying to build awareness about discrimination. Recently, they conducted a school-wide survey to get feedback from fellow students on the issue. They have not seen the survey results, but Medina said he believes they will provide the team with some good information, as the students' answers were completely anonymous.

The Civil Rights Team follows a statewide model under the Civil Rights Team Project, a state-wide school based initiative to, “combat hate violence, prejudice, harassment and bias in the schools.”

Civil Rights Team adviser Kyle Beeton has taken students to events where teams from schools around the state get together for training. Medina said he and 10 others on his team have traveled to Augusta so far this year.

The project, “attempts to create a structure within schools whereby teachers and students work together in a coordinated effort with state and local law enforcement to change the climate of intolerance and violence within schools,” and “to create alternative mechanisms through which students could alert someone of harassment before the harassment escalates to serious violence.”

According to the Maine office of Attorney General, which runs the program, the state-wide project has grown to include 18 middle and high schools in 1996 to more than 202 this year.

Medina said he would continue to check the pump station for graffiti, and other places here in the Midcoast for any other signs of discrimination.