Pride Finds a Home in Halls of ELHS
With national headlines of book bans, opposition to drag shows and state legislatures limiting the rights of transgender youth to access gender affirming healthcare, queer youth and their allies are concerned about their futures. At East Lansing High School (ELHS), students have access to after-school clubs – and a slew of affirming educators – to help find belonging and a space among their peers.
June has served as a month of celebration, or Pride, for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals, beginning in 1969 with riots at Stonewall Inn, a New York City bar.
The ELHS club Alliance works to meet the evolving needs of students.
Cody Harrell teaches English and journalism for ELHS and has been the adviser for Alliance, a club for students who identify as LGBT, or allies of that community.
“Clubs at [ELHS], they wax and wane depending on the need of the students,” he said. “For the first couple of years, they wanted to be education and event focused. They put on a presentation about queer representation in the arts and talked about artists. They worked on different initiatives and professional development [for teachers] about telling truths and their stories. Also, some years, Alliance was masquerading as a D&D [dungeons and dragons] club with queer students playing. I see my role as someone who helps facilitate what kids need that year.”
Harrell, who has taught at ELHS and advised Alliance for seven years, recognizes his students know they’re in something of a protective bubble in a largely progressive community like East Lansing.
“Students do constantly realize how blessed they are,” he said. “We don’t worry about book bans or issues like that. I worry about how it will impact them if they go to a [college or university] that isn’t quite as accepting. They realize they’re in a great place and realize it’s not forever.”
Harrell made sure students could see him as a safe person to connect with.
“When I started at ELHS seven years ago,” he said, “I hung a Pride flag in my classroom. It was the first one in the building that I know of.”
Leo Kendall is a member of Alliance who will be entering their junior year in the fall and served as the club’s secretary this past year. They joined the club during their freshman year.
“My experience with being queer and having a community up to that point was really rocky,” Kendall said. “I discovered that I was queer more or less in the middle of the pandemic and some of my immediate family wasn’t the most accepting, forcing me to have to live with my dad, instead. Because of that, I was scared to be queer and be out to people I loved and cared about…and had to find somewhere that people would love and care about me no matter what my orientation or gender is.”
Harrell is quick to point out conditions aren’t always perfect at the school.
“[We] still have to address the boys in the hallway,” he said. “Constantly addressing these microaggressions. Even if we don’t change them, we can disrupt their behavior.”
The high school has a long history of educating students and staff about gender quality.
Bonnie McGraw has been adviser for the ELHS club Students for Gender Equality since its founding in 2015. She remembers the strength of the first group of club leaders.
“They saw a need for educating our student body and staff about issues around gender equality, whether it was women’s rights or the rights of trans people or non-binary or anything having to do with gender and equity,” she said.
“It was kind of an awakening that first year. Everyone kind of knew about these things and they were somewhat talked about. But they let the cat out of the bag and they pushed the envelope and they went for it. They got all kinds of topics under discussion. They ended up working with Senator Curtis Hertel to revamp the state health curriculum. Here in our own district, [they got] rid of the abstinence-only component of our health curriculum and got LGBTQI+ issues.”
McGraw also recognized how much has changed in the community.
“I was here when Alliance started ,” she said of when the club was first formed years ago. “And wow, that was insane. You’d have thought we were here with a big recruitment sign [reading] ‘let’s make all our students gay and lesbian.’ There was a radio announcer slamming us on the air and the [Lansing] State Journal was writing articles about us. So they went through it when they started, but I think the culture had changed by the time [Students for Gender Equality] came around.”
But while East Lansing may have grown more progressive, news headlines portray a dogmatic, divided country.
“I’m incredibly concerned,” Kendall said. “It’s difficult not to be cynical about the current political climate, honestly. For me personally, I plan on getting out of America. I’m looking into a lot of international schools but I understand I’m very fortunate for that opportunity. I think if immediate and extreme action is not taken, not only the trans community, but the queer community as a whole could be at risk. Additionally, it will 100% put people of color and women in an ever more disadvantaged spot because of the waves of anti-queer legislation.
“It sucks that we as kids have to deal with [this] directly,” Kendall said, “and know that it’s either leave, speak up, or risk your life.”
Staff is dedicated to supporting all young people at the school.
ELHS administration continues to develop a supportive environment for all its students.
“Administration has been so supportive, from our superintendent to our high school administration,” McGraw said. “On two separate occasions, the students ran a [professional development] day and they were able to educate the teachers. They split into groups focusing on gender equity issues, socio economic issues, religion. And the students talked to teachers about how the experiences they’ve had in their lives with some of the things teachers might not even understand, affect them in the classroom. We have experienced a lot of support.”
Klaudia Burton is the Director of Equity and Social Justice for the district, championing the work being done in the halls and classrooms.
“Our district does have a transgender student support policy that’s in place,” she said. “We did adopt a new policy at the beginning of 2021 that we’ve made some changes to [to reflect] what we want for our district. [It includes] things like students accessing name changes and things like that.
“Kind of our next big step that we will work on over the summer is looking at formalizing some of those processes,” she said. ”So if a student does come and wants a name change, what does that process look like? How do we support students who are doing it for either a gender or sex-based reason or for a culture-based reason if they’re doing it in that same vein because we know it goes far beyond just having a name change. So we have supports there for students who transition through that process. We have amazing counseling staff. We have amazing support staff within our buildings. We’re working consistently to make sure we have training opportunities for our staff to engage in and learn more about LGBTQIA+ initiatives and what they can do for our youth.
Burton also described a form students were invited to complete, identifying their preferred names and who could it be used with.
“If I have a conference with a family member, am I allowed to use that [name],” she said, referencing the form.
“For a lot of our students, this is their space,” Burton said. “This is their space where they come out to us and they don’t for their families, some of them don’t have that opportunity. And that’s really unfortunate, but we want to make sure that they are seen and heard and valued.”
Editor’s Note: Cody Harrell is a member of the ELi Board of Directors and serves as the Public Editor.