Stuyvesant Hosts New York City’s First Gender and Sexuality Alliance Summit

The New York City Department of Education (DOE) held its first Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) Summit at Stuyvesant High School on Monday, January 29. The summit was part of the DOE’s first multi-agency strategy aimed at delivering services focused specifically on the challenges faced by LGBTQ youth. Close to 800 students attended the event from across the city, which was organized by SPARK Coordinator Angel Colon, Assistant Principal of Pupil Personnel Services Casey Pedrick, Social Worker Jessica Chock-Goldman, and a number of other staff members including school counselors. Several students, including Dora Lanigan, Star Garcia, Connie Walden, Kiran Vuksanaj, and Michela Marchini, helped run the event.

The summit gave student attendees the opportunity to safely converse about sexuality and gender. “The morning started with why we are here [...] to promote LGBTQ empowerment, setting up GSA’s within the schools, safe spaces, and LGBTQ education and teaching tolerance,” said Colon. All rooms and spaces used during the summit were temporarily renamed after LGBTQ icons. For example, the theater was named after Bayard Rustin. Other rooms were named after author James Baldwin and tennis star Billie Jean King.

All bathrooms were also made gender neutral for the day. “Having gender-neutral multi-occupancy bathrooms [...] helps to deconstruct [...] the attitude a lot of people have, which is where ‘boys are boys, girls are girls, and boys and girls are separate, and different, and opposite in a lot of ways,’” said senior Connie Walden, who identifies as nonbinary and was an organizer of the event. With gender-neutral bathrooms, there is no stigma associated with choosing the ‘wrong’ bathroom for the trans community. “The number of trans people who are harassed because they’re in the wrong bathroom is just stupid, it’s just an unbelievably common occurrence in our society,” Walden continued.

“[The gender-neutral bathrooms are] something that [...] we can discuss as a community going forward, if that’s something that we would keep, but all decisions that would talk about the use of all our bathrooms that way would be something that we would discuss with the larger community,” Principal Eric Contreras said. The comfort of the student body would be critical if this change were to happen, along with a balance between gender-neutral bathrooms and gender specific bathrooms. “The biggest issue would probably be pushback [...] and also it does take a big transition to do that,” Walden said.

Attendees participated in over 30 workshops available at the event. The Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization focused on crisis intervention for LGBTQ youth, held an interactive workshop that taught professional techniques for supporting LGBTQ youth. PFLAG NYC, an organization that addresses LGBTQ family issues, hosted a workshop for students and staff on coming out to their friends and family. Attendees were also able to hear coming out stories and ask speakers questions.

Many LGBTQ activists, including New York City First Lady Chirlane McCray, former NFL player Wade Davis, and drag queen Miss Peppermint from RuPaul's Drag Race, came and spoke to attendees. “They shared their very personal stories about how it’s okay to advocate for yourself and [...] be who you are, and that the journey can be hard, but there are people here to support you,” Contreras said. Through listening to the experiences of other well-known members of the LGBTQ community, students learned that they are not alone in the struggles that they face.

The event was proposed by the DOE’s first liaison for LGBTQ students, Jared Fox, who reached out to Contreras and asked if the event could be held at Stuyvesant. Fox and Contreras had previously worked together when Contreras worked as Head of Social Studies for New York City.

“I was honored to hold the first ever summit in all of New York. We have to be leaders in supporting great initiatives and [...] the very foundational pieces of who we are as a country as far as democracy and equality,” Contreras said. If given the opportunity, Stuyvesant is open to the possibility of holding another GSA Summit next year.