Gay-Straight Alliance continues to promote awareness despite initial objections

By Jennifer H. Svan, Stars and Stripes

MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan — In four short months, the Gay-Straight Alliance at Robert D. Edgren High School has made a name for itself — despite its name.

After riding out controversy that swirled around the club’s formation, GSA members have devoted the second half of the school year to raising money and awareness for various causes.

“I don’t think another school club has done so much in such a short time,” said English teacher Laurie Kuntz, the club’s faculty sponsor.

Most recently, GSA spearheaded Edgren’s participation in Friday’s “National Day of Silence,” a movement started at the University of Virginia in 1996 to prevent bullying in schools. This year the event was dedicated to Lawrence King, a California middle school student who was shot and killed in February, allegedly because he was gay.

At Edgren the event drew participation beyond the GSA circle, with about 30 students wearing T-shirts and toting white boards or pen and pad to communicate in classrooms and hallways.

“Ethnic, religious, sexual differences is no reason to single someone out and treat them differently,” Heather Steele, a senior and National Honors Society member, jotted in a notebook.

Another time, Kuntz received an anonymous complaint about her e-mailing a V-Day announcement to all three Department of Defense Dependents Schools on Misawa. The individual took umbrage with Kuntz and her writing in the announcement that DODDS teachers, among other groups, had collaborated on the event.

Despite the club’s success, a stigma still persists because of GSA’s name, say Kuntz and students, one that’s especially hard to shake in a conservative military community.

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