GSA: Fergus's Greatest Improvement

The latest addition to Fergus High’s community, GSA, is meant to boost participants’ morale, and encourages them to befriend new people. The GSA Club, an acronym for Gay-Straight Alliance, or Genders and Sexualities Alliance, is an organization that encourages the heterosexual and the LGTBQ community to support one another, as well as provide a safe environment to socialize. A club that is recognized nationwide, GSA also creates a ladder for human rights in both the middle and high school prejudices, as well as any possible neighborhood biases.

With no fees to pay, and meetings usually held during lunch hours every couple of weeks, Fergus’s GSA had recently elected their officers. Garrett Fowler (junior), was elected president by the members democratically. Fowler spoke about the benefits the club would have for the school:

“[The GSA would] definitely help people be more educated on [sexual orientation], being there is quite a bit of homophobia in this area.”

The school benefits from this club because of its message about tolerance - putting the “A” for “Accepting” in “SOAR.” According to members, that was the one letter that wasn’t holding up very well on canvas. Holly Heser, a junior-senior English teacher, and one of the advisers for the club, stated,

“In a lot of cases, there still is a negative entity, negative feelings, on parts of some students toward gay or lesbian or transgender people.”

GSA is there to quell these hateful vibes by allowing students to speak about their ideas, any concerns they had, and share their mission statement.

“They brainstormed ideas for how they could potentially involve other students in the club, and I know we’ve talked about doing an extension on the Kindness Challenge… just to get the name of the club out there, and to promote kindness and acceptance and tolerance for all students, not just students who identify themselves as different,” Jessica Vallincourt, freshman English teacher and host of the GSA lunch meetings reported.

The GSA is meant to be entirely anonymous, anyone who joins can be kept in secrecy.

“Whatever’s said in the room, stays in the room,” Fowler says. “We can’t make any assumptions. It’s kinda a little oath we took.” Any members who join have the option to keep their face invisible to the public, for precautionary reasons, as high school students are known for their ruthlessness.

Members feel that it is not only an improvement to the school, but also to themselves, as they feel that they are making a difference, and helping improve the environment of the canvas.

Anyone interested in joining has the right to know that it is just for support, there is no judgement for who you are, what sexuality you identify as, be it straight or not, and it is there to let people know that there are people who are willing to listen, and to help those in need of acceptance.