The Gender Sexuality Awareness Club (GSA) has had an exciting start to the school year, participating in the Second Annual GSA Summit and “National Coming Out Day” at RHS.
First, the RHS GSA participated in the Second Annual GSA Summit presented by Bergen County Freeholder, Tracy Zur. This Summit brought together all of the GSA’s in Bergen County to share experiences, struggles, and successes.
This year, the GSA Summit had a special guest speaker, Raphael Miranda from Channel 4 News. Mr. Miranda shared his own personal story as a prominent gay man and the challenges he faced as a prominent public figure and inspired the participants to be proud of who they are.
Mr. Stracco, the RHS GSA advisor, who was also instrumental in talking with the Freeholders to sponsor this event, thought “the energy of this summit was exceptional. Over two hundred students from across Bergen County came together as strangers, but left as friends.”
The RHS GSA was able to share with others how effective our GSA is while gleaning other activities to make our GSA even more effective.
Also, on Friday, October 11, staff and faculty members, through the support of Mr. Morano and the RHS GSA participated in National Coming Out Day to celebrate coming out as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) or as an ally.
According to the Human Rights Campaign, a leading advocate to the LGBT community, “coming out – whether it is as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or allied – STILL MATTERS. Every person who speaks up changes more hearts and minds, and creates new advocates for equality.”
To acknowledge the day, twenty-eight teachers and staff members throughout the building opened their closet doors as a symbolic gesture of recognizing the day. On the opened doors, each teacher or staff member placed a GSA-generated sign that simply said, “National Coming Out Day This closet door is open to acknowledge National Coming Out Day. “
Although simplistic in nature, the gesture provided a conversation of the importance of accepting others as they are.