Siddarth Deshpande
Reporter
This Monday, GSA is holding Ally week, which consists of several different activities targeted towards raising awareness about the GSA and its goals.
The national GSA organization is designed to draw attention to Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transsexual (LGBT) issues in schools and to encourage people to become allies of students of different sexual orientations who are being harrassed and tormented.
Members of the GSA club at NCHS have similar objectives. “Our goals for Ally Week are to encourage people to join the GSA as allies, and to raise awareness about our cause,” said junior Sarah Singh, president of the GSA.
The GSA’s activites allow students to support LGBT teens facing issues at the high school. “We are going to culminate our activities by holding a Rainbow Day on Friday so allies can identify themselves by wearing rainbow-colored clothing,” school psychologist Dr. Rossella said. “We believe that the atmosphere produced by the ‘Names Can Hurt’ program will prove highly advantageous for us, as some of its core goals match ours.”
GSA will also help NCHS students to become aware of LGBT teens by broadcasting facts, statistics, and other information on the morning announcements and the video announcements that will “hopefully give us more publicity,” Mr. Milton, TeenTalk Counselor said.
The GSA also hopes to give its already rising membership a boost during Ally Week. “When we started our meeting this year, we only had a few mebers but already, many more people have joined us,” Sarah said. “We hope to gain additional members this week…so that we can come closer to achieving our goals.”
“We believe that Ally Week will prove to be an effective kickoff for other activities we have planned this year such as the ‘Day of Silence,'” Mr. Milton said.
