News-Press Editorial: Ally Week begins a chain of kindness at schools

This week we were pleased to report on Ally Week held at Crescenta Valley High School, where students and teachers banded together to support youths who are part of the LGBT community.

Supportive messages written on paper strips were linked together into a “Chain of Kindness” that decorated the campus, classrooms were festooned in rainbow decor and the varsity football team was provided rainbow stickers to wear on their helmets for their 28-27 win over Arcadia on Thursday.

Ally Week was first promoted nationally a decade ago by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, with the hopes such weeklong events would start people considering ways they could “become better allies to LGBT youth,” according to its website.

Although a wholesale change in attitude is late in coming, events such as CV High’s Ally Week show our population is, however glacially, becoming more accepting than we were in the not-so-distant past when anti-LGBT bullying and name-calling were the norm.

GLSEN reports that a 2013 National School Climate Survey showed “eight out of ten LGBT students report experiencing verbal harassment at school because of their sexual orientation, six out of ten because of their gender expression, and nearly 30% report missing at least a day of school in the past month out of fear for their personal safety.”

Those are heart-breaking survey results, but we believe the numbers will improve, provided we continue to teach love and acceptance for all in our homes as well as in our classrooms.

We congratulate the 80-member Crescenta Valley High School Gay Straight Alliance Club and the student government leaders who jointly organized the Ally Week celebration. It was a school-wide demonstration of kindness and solidarity that we hope will spread to other local campuses.