A group of students are fighting to change the name of Wheeler High School, named after confederate general Joseph Wheeler, in Cobb County, Georgia.

Student leaders say the school’s name upholds racism and contradicts their school’s values of diversity and inclusivity. For months, they have called on the Board of Education to change the name through public comments at board meetings, email campaigns and social media posts.

But the board voted to dissolve a committee to consider school names at their Nov. 19 meeting, and the majority of board members oppose the students’ efforts.

Wheeler High School was named in 1965, the same year Cobb County integrated schools after the Brown v. Board decision in 1954. Today, Black students make up 39 percent of Wheeler’s student body.

“How do you expect students to succeed at school, especially Black students, when it's named Wheeler High School?” senior Jake McGhee said. “It's a slap in the face. That was how the name came about in the ‘60s, just as a slap in the face to the newly integrated students at the school.”

McGhee, the vice president of student government, was inspired to take action by a petition with nearly 5,000 signatures launched last June. McGhee said a survey created by the student government in July found that most students supported renaming Wheeler, and he helped form a new group of seven students that meets weekly to advocate for the name change.

The group’s “first big action” was when McGhee and two other students attended the Board of Education’s virtual meeting on Sept. 17 to make public comments in support of renaming their school.

“It took two hours of research of how to get into the board meeting to make a public comment, and then we found out it was during the school day,” McGhee said. “We actually had to get permission from our teachers to miss class to speak at the board meeting.”

In October, the students met with local journalists from East Cobb News and the Marietta Daily Journal to raise awareness. They planned to attend the board’s monthly meeting, but the board did not announce their switch from virtual to in-person meetings until it was too late for the students to attend — a move senior and student leader Sydney Spessard said is representative of the board’s attempts to silence student voices.

“The thread that runs through all of this is that there's a severe lack of communication, and they make it nearly impossible for anyone who wants to make a public comment actually be able to make a public comment,” Spessard said.

At the most recent meeting, the board voted to dissolve the committee they approved in August to evaluate renaming Wheeler. The committee never met before it was abolished.

“It seems you realized there was power behind this movement and feared that your ability to suppress our voices was slipping away,” Spessard said at the meeting. “Please know, though I figure you already know, that you are silencing the voices of hundreds of students, students who you claim to represent and protect.”

The board also implemented a new rule that will require at least four members to support adding agenda items to future meetings.

Zoe Shepard, a junior and student leader, said the new rule will make it more difficult for the board members who support renaming Wheeler, Charisse Davis and Jaha Howard, to bring the topic forward.

“I feel like that also just kind of silences our voice and stifles what we're trying to do, because the board members that we do have in support of us and who are trying to listen to our voices can't even get things on the agenda,” Shepard said.

After the November meeting, Davis and Howard voiced their support for the students on Facebook.

“If I knew that some of my former students grew up to be the kind of kids that see something wrong, and then do something about it, I would be so incredibly proud,” Davis said in her post.

Despite opposition, the students plan to continue attending board meetings. They are reaching out to alumni to ask for their support, including Boston Celtics basketball player and Wheeler graduate Jaylen Brown who met with the group and spoke up about the issue in an NBA media appearance.

“Viewing this, the opposition and the hate as you might call it, just as more of a reason that we're doing the right thing and that this is a fight that's worthwhile rather than just something insignificant, it really does give me more of a reason to keep going,” Spessard said.