By Shauna Scott Rhone
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Like conversation commandos, several Western Hills High School sophomores fanned out across the lunchroom last week with a mission: to greet and talk to someone they didn't know.

Their English teacher, Patti Lenahan, signed them up for Mix It Up, a program created by a national group called Teaching Tolerance. The idea, originally designed for high school teens but embraced by colleges and elementary schools, was to use this event to make new friends during the lunch period.

Mrs. Lenahan devised some tools for her students.

"I made a grid to make sure they didn't end up at a table they normally sit at for lunch," she says. She also gave them a list of specific questions to ask their new acquaintances, including how long they'd been at the school, how they formed their groups of friends and whether they had suffered rejection from other groups.

We talked to six of Mrs. Lenahan's students for a story before Mix It Up day on Nov. 21, but we wanted to go back to those students to see how the day really went for them.

Marcel Freeland of Westwood and Ryan Johnson of Covedale are believers in Mix It Up.

"You got to learn something about people in your school," says Mr. Freeland, "people you don't normally talk to."

"You also find out how people feel about Mix It Up, because they're not used to it," says Mr. Johnson. "If (you) don't hang around with the same people all the time, you can really find out about other people ... "

Mr. Freeland met another sophomore, Derrick Wilcox.

"He said he hangs out with the people he went to school with two years ago. He doesn't reject people, but his friends bring other people along that he doesn't really approve of ..."

When he approached fellow sophomore Gary Thomas, Mr. Johnson says, he could feel the uneasiness.

"As soon as I went up to talk to him, the other people at the table just stared at me like, `What is he doing here?' They didn't know why I was there, so I told them about (Mix It Up)."

He says he asked Mr. Thomas whether he had ever rejected anybody. "He said, `No, that's stupid,' but he'd been rejected because of his color (he's white) and his neighborhood. He tried to walk up to Westwood once and people were yelling at him, saying stuff like `Look at that white boy.' But he was cool."

Deborah Brown of Westwood sat down next to sophomore John Kelly and introduced herself.

"I had never seen him before and he was just sitting at the table by himself," she says. "I asked him `Can I interview you for this class project?' and he said `Yeah.' And when I was walking in the hallway later, he waved at me, so I guess it helped."

Ms. Brown says her new friend, also a sophomore, was someone she may have looked at but had never truly seen.

"I had never seen him and he sits three tables away from me (at lunch)," says a surprised Ms. Brown. "And now when I'm walking in the hallway ... I say hi."

Brandon Domineack, also of Westwood, says he had a similar experience after he introduced himself to senior Antwan Williams.

"I had seen him, but we had never talked before," he says, calling it "a `hi and bye' situation. "But he was nice. And, hopefully, after the interview, we'll talk a lot more. I found out we had a lot in common; we both play sports. It's crazy how you don't talk to people but they are around you all the time.

"I think I made a friend."

Classmate Amber Wilkerson's potential new friend also was someone she had never really noticed. But the Westwood resident had a valid excuse.

"I asked him how long he'd been here and he said `Three,' " she says.

She thought he meant he was a junior.

"He said, `I've been here for three days.' " He was a transfer from another school. Ms. Wilkerson says she became Jerry Relthford's first friend at West High.

"I asked him how he identified himself with the people in his old school and he said he usually hung out with the athletes," she says. "So I asked him, `Do you know you're sitting with all the people who play basketball? He said no. So I told him, `After we're finished, I'll introduce you to all of them or tell them to come and talk to you.' "

She says she hopes she enabled him to make other new friends.

Sosena Erco who was born in Boston but grew up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, says she was OK with Mix It Up because she makes new friends easily.

"At first," she says, "it bothered me to talk to somebody new ... But I always thought about meeting people who are very different from me. I think that is inside me, to learn about other people and to think like them. I want to know what people think, what they like, how they work, everything."

Her openness led her to discussions with four students: Heather Pike, Michelle Nimeskern, Carly Freese and Amber Seals, all 17. Ms. Erco told them all about Mix It Up.

"All of them say it was very interesting and very exciting because it was like an adventure knowing people that they didn't used to know ..."

After their stints as friendship ambassadors, would these 10th-graders try again to make a friend outside their circles?

"I think I'll continue meeting people," Ms. Erco says. "I very much like what I did today."

"All the people here are friends, really," Mr. Domineack says. "You just gotta learn how to meet them."

Mrs. Lenahan says she and her students are planning a school-wide event to promote diversity and get people to mingle with others they don't know.

Maybe Mix It Up started something.