Have you ever felt out of place at home or school? Do you feel that you do not have a community of your own to talk about topics that are important to you? Well, you should consider joining the GSA!

GSA is our school’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance club, a fun and supportive group for all LGBTQ+ students and allies. While we are currently doing very well and are growing in membership with every meeting, in previous months, the club was on the verge of closure because of the loss of members. This led Subhrada Das ’22, who was this year’s secretary, to focus on recruiting more members to help her run GSA.

“I was looking forward to having new board members to help me build this club back up. Since I have been a long time member, it was really sad to see how the club declined during the remote situation this year,” said Das.

Within weeks, GSA held an election resulting in Das becoming President, Rose Marabello ’22 becoming Vice-President, and myself becoming the new Secretary. 

We have been working hard to revamp the club and encourage more students to join. One of the first actions we took was preparing for a comeback meeting, in which we would introduce the new leaders of GSA and its revamped mission. 

Starting the club again was a daunting task, but we were determined to bring the GSA back to its former glory. After hours of preparation, we held a Zoom meeting on March 23rd, 2021, where we introduced ourselves, did icebreaker activities, and played games such as Kahoot. Despite some minor mishaps, the meeting was ultimately successful and led to many more students joining the club. It was such a relief to see that we had a solid group of around fifteen people who would come to every Zoom club meeting.

One new member, Chanel Richardson ’22 said, “The meeting was really fun! It was really open and welcoming, so I can’t wait to go from now on.” 

Bronx Science is home to people of many different genders and sexualities, so we believe that it is extremely important that we have a space where students can feel comfortable and safe to talk about any issues on our minds. That is the main change we are making to the club — shifting the focus from spreading awareness and current events to discussing everyday problems that affect LGBTQ+ people as well as what it can feel like to grow up like this.

We believe that only focusing on the tragedies that this community has faced does not help to build a positive and safe environment, as it can be depressing. Instead of only honing in on the negative aspects of being LGBTQ+, we want to foster fun discussions about pop culture and social media as well.

Some topics that GSA has already been able to talk about are whether or not one can support the Harry Potter franchise while not supporting J.K. Rowling, and if creating LGBTQ+ headcanons about characters is appropriate. A headcanon is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “ideas held by fans of series that are not explicitly supported by sanctioned text or other media. Fans maintain the ideas in their heads, outside of the accepted canon.” An example of the latter would be speculating if whether the character Dipper from the Disney Channel show Gravity Falls is a transgender male given the many insecurities he seems to have surrounding his masculinity. It was great talking about other characters like him and how we often project our feelings onto characters. These stories and headcanons help us feel accepted and understood.

One of the projects that we hope to move forward with is having guest speakers come in for some pride month events this June 2021! While I cannot currently disclose who may be coming, I can say that we have all different types of people who will talk about their experiences being LGBTQ+ and how it has affected their lives and careers.

If any of this sounds interesting, you should definitely stop by one week to visit our club! It is never too late to join, so clear your schedules for Tuesdays 2:51-3:32 and follow our Instagram for more updates @bxscigsa!

Bronx Science is home to people of many different genders and sexualities, so we believe that it is extremely important that we have a space where students can feel comfortable and safe to talk about any issues on our minds.