I must admit I was more than a bit disheartened after the Prentice Alberta government introduced Bill 10, in an effort to derail a private members bill introduced by Liberal Edmonton-Centre MLA Laurie Blakeman, which would have allowed students, on their own accord to form a Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) club at their school.
Premier Prentice said Blakeman’s bill did not strike enough balance between student rights and those of parents and school boards. Bill 10, which the government suspended after second reading, would have allowed students to form a GSA, even if a school board objected, by appealing to Alberta Education which would then make sure the students could form the club.
The catch, however, is that the GSA might not be located on school property.
Blackeman’s private members bill followed a similar attempt by Calgary Liberal MLA Kent Hehr in April of 2014 that would have also made it mandatory for schools to allow students to form a GSA.
However, my faith was restored after I talked to the staff of the Pembina Hills School Division as well as the administration of Barrhead Composite High School.
Mark Thiesen, Pembina Hills School Division Assistant Superintendent of Education Services, told me that under the division’s Administrative Policy 50-9, students Rights and Responsibilities, ensured students rights to form a GSA if they chose to do so.
In fact, after further investigation, I found out not only was there no barrier to form a GSA in any Pembina Hills School Division, but that a group of students had already formed one at Barrhead Composite High School.
As you will read later on in the Leader, not only is there a GSA at the high school, its formation was prompted by a member of the school’s staff.
Thank you, to the staff and students of BCHS for restoring my faith. When I was in high school in Red Deer in the late 1980’s, we had a similar group, except that it was called Students and Teachers Opposing Prejudice (STOP).
The group was the brainchild of Darren Lund, a first year teacher, who created the group as a way to counter the hatred spewed out by Jim Keegstra, a former teacher in nearby Eckville, who taught his students the holocaust was a hoax. Red Deer and area high school students were also the target of hate propaganda from Terry Long’s Aryan Nations camp.
Little did I know at the time, how much courage Mr. Lund must have had to stick to his guns and fight for the student club. Not from school administration, but from members of the public. Lund received countless letters, phone calls and even threats. Yet he continued and our STOP group gave birth to a number of similar school groups across the province, including what we now call GSA.
Statistics Canada does not have any concrete numbers of how many Canadians identify themselves as gay, lesbian or transgendered. A poll commissioned by the National Post in 2012 say the number is about five per cent, with 10 per cent of Canadians 18 to 34 years-old identifying themselves as gay, lesbian or transgendered. The difference is believed to be because younger people are more willing to identify themselves as gay.
No matter what the percentage is, it is a significant number. In Alberta schools, there are a large number of students who feel marginalized, isolated and unaccepted. The passing of a bill protecting student’s rights to form a GSA could have gone a long way to show students everywhere that they are not alone.
