Leaving My GSA Behind

 

As a senior in high school and president of my high school’s GSA, I feel graduation coming with a mix of sadness and excitement. I’m excited to see what my future holds and what future activism I’ll be able to do with all the skills I’ve learned so far, but I’m sad to be leaving my GSA behind.

I love my GSA and as the school year winds down, we are going to be electing next year’s officers so we have a foundation to lay the club onto. I have nothing but confidence in the candidates, but I don’t want to leave them behind. They’re like a family to me and I want to be with them to lead the way to greatness.

Already this year, we’ve made a major change to the school culture. For our school’s annual Sadie’s dance, the rally that goes along with it is Battle of the Sexes, something that winds up being incredibly sexist with insults being thrown, specifically from the guys at the girls. Girls are expected to dress in pink and white and boys in blue and black. Last year, before I came out as transgender, the decision of what colors to wear was hard and one that caused me a lot of stress.

With that experience under my belt and knowing countless girls, including my younger sister, who are made uncomfortable by the sexist comments at the rally, we decided to change it for the better as a club. We started out by proposing an alternative to the setup at the rally -- instead of boys vs. girls, students would be seated by underclassmen vs. upperclassmen. No way for sexist comments to appear if the layout is changed. This idea was struck down by a vote in the leadership class, with people voting towards tradition instead of change.

But the good news is that we were able to implement a third color into the mix: purple. The idea of purple was that anyone who didn’t feel comfortable identifying with a side could wear the color and sit wherever they’d like. It also created an opportunity for allies to show their support and give other students an outlet to protest the rally while participating in the required event.

And it went well! The rally was still full of sexist comments, some even worse than previous years full of “Make me a sandwich!” But the purple was implemented without issue and the rally emcees did a great job at shutting down disrespectful chants. There was an incident where a friend of mine was wearing purple and told by a teacher she was not allowed to sit on the boys' side because she was obviously a girl and that’s where she belonged. Threats were made to get the principal involved and she eventually slipped away and joined me on the boys’ side where she was more than a little peeved. Luckily, this was the only staff member who seemed to have forgotten to read his email and didn’t understand. He’s since been talked to.

The group of underclassmen who made this happen are my hope for the future of our school and club. I know that these young people who are so full of passion will be able to lead our club forward and do great things. I can’t wait to elect a new great activist to hurl our school into the respectful place that it deserves to be. Who knows -- maybe next year we won’t have a Battle of the Sexes Rally at all.

Kane Tajnai is a GLSEN Student Ambassador.