Pink shirts worn at school to send a message
Jun 16, 2009 - 09:44 AM
Scott Howard
More than 100 students at Brock High School took a stand against discrimination last week -- simply by thinking pink.
The school's Students Together Against Racism (STAR) caught wind of an initiative that's catching on across the globe that sees students don pink shirts to show their intolerance for various forms of discrimination. These include discrimination on the basis of race, sexual orientation, gender, religion and socio-economic status.
The initiative started at a school in Nova Scotia. The story goes that a Grade 9 male student wore a pink T-shirt to school one day and was targeted by bullies, who called him a homosexual for wearing pink and threatened physical violence. Two popular Grade 12 students overheard the exchange and decided to take action. They went to a nearby discount store and purchased 50 pink shirts to get their friends to wear to the school the next day in an effort to combat the bullying in their school, and within society as a whole. Soon, nearly all off the students were dressed in pink as a show of solidarity.
Members of the STAR group have been selling pink T-shirts -- the fronts of which simply read "Stood Up" -- over the past few months.
According to STAR president Amanda Burne, the local initiative started slowly at first but quickly gained ground.
"As word spread around the school it caught on very well," she said.
"I think we (students) deserve to have our voices heard on discrimination, not only at our school but in the community as well."
Last Thursday, that voice was undoubtedly heard as more than 100 students stood together in their pink shirts for a group photo.
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