Mon 19 Sep 2016 In: New Zealand Daily News View at Wayback View at NDHA
Wellington East Girls College has held it’s first ever Queer Pride Week with great success. Supported by the school’s Well Being Prefect and a Guidance Councillor, the Queer Straight Alliance a range of events, including a film screen, panel with MPs, Day of Silence photo booth and quiz. Hadas Mayron, a Queer Straight Alliance leader at the school says one of the highlights of the week was definitely the MP Panel. MP Panel including Jan Logie, Grant Robertson and Louisa Wall “We hosted it in our school hall after school hours and invited students from all Wellington high schools as well as members of the Queer community through InsideOUT,” says Mayron. “Grant Robertson, Jan Logie and Louisa Wall made up the panel and talked about their experiences growing up, during the 1986 Homosexual Law Reform, and during the 2013 Marriage Equality bill amongst other things. They were all extremely kind and had important and interesting answers.” The National Day of Silence fell during the Pride Week, a day of action in which students across New Zealand vow to take a form of silence to call attention to the silencing effect of homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying, name-calling and harassment in schools. Mayron says the teachers at the school showed an overwhelming amount of supportive on the Day of Silence with some dressing in different colours to create a rainbow with another sending heartwarming email and one teacher even making a video to post on his Youtube channel. Teachers dressed in rainbow colours to show their support “Throughout the whole week we got small positive comments in the hall way which were really lovely. It was also really cool to see students in their own clothes on the Friday, and be able to express themselves that way, especially in terms of gender identity and expression.” The school raised a rainbow flag for the duration of the Pride Week and the following week.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Monday, 19th September 2016 - 11:11am