Monday, the 23rd we had an exclusive interview with Chap, the director of diversity at LREI. We asked her questions about the school’s opinions on LGBTQ issues and her own. She even showed us a video on an open community that has different genders. She also told us about her story being a lesbian, and she showed us pins that had “Ask me about my pronouns” on them. These are the questions we asked her:

1. What are your views on LGBTQ rights and equality today? Are there certain things
2. What are you worried about or want changed?
3. How do you think LREI can be more inclusive and supportive with transitioning or kids afraid to come out?
4. What sort of events have you been to about this topic? Any places you can recommend us to go to?
5. Do you think our world is getting better in terms of supporting the LGBTQ community?
6. Do you think LREI is doing a good job in teaching younger kids about the LGBTQ community and allies?

Chap had a lot of great answers to our questions, but these really stood out to us: LREI ran a LGBTQ rights forum for marriage equality. A parent was the head of the LGSA, and hundreds of rights were given to hederosexual families and not LGBTQ families. Passing the marriage equality bill was monumental because of the access to more rights for gay people. But can she still feel safe all the time? Still today, people’s hearts still haven’t changed. If kids share that they’re apart of the LGBTQ community, the adults will know what to do. They need to do more work on helping the families understand and know about the kid for a supportive space. The rest of the world still has a long way to go, so if families and schools can be on board then that’s good for now. She won’t allow people to discriminate at all. She used to chair the GLSEN chapter in NYC. A few students letting them know about their sexuality, is better than no students. If they could share the culture and live in a world where gender and sexuality doesn’t matter, then we would be a much more inclusive society. LREI could do way more for the LGBTQ community. We should educate families, and all teachers to be more courageous about teaching about the gender spectrum, and sexual orientation spectrum. She also said that we should hear less of, “boys and girls”, or “ladies and gentlemen”. Many bathrooms are still not gender specific so we should do something to change that. LREI still asks for gender on applications. LREI has done a lot of work, but we still need some more changes to be done. They think of gender/race/being adopted for matching up buddies. She also said that when people say, “you guys” as general term for everyone including girls, she doesn’t respond because she knows she isn’t a guy. We learned that people have to be more mindful with their words, and that the school still has some work to do in order to make LREI a same environment for the LGBTQ community.