In a community where bullying has been a hot topic during the past few months, more than 100 Don Ross Secondary students showed their anti-bullying spirit on Wednesday (Feb. 23) by wearing varying amounts of pink.
Mayor Greg Gardner, Squamish Nation Chief Dale Harry, school board chair Rick Price and RCMP Cpl. Terry Gillespie joined the student ranks to show their support.
Don Ross students have been working to clean up their image since an incident that landed one 14-year-old Don Ross student in the hospital with a broken hand and a concussion last September after allegedly being forced to fight.
Shortly afterwards, Don Ross students circulated a petition with over 200 signatures requesting school administration take a more aggressive stance against school bullying and also participated in another anti-bullying day in September.
Anti-bullying, or pink shirt day, swept North America more than three years ago after some impressive anti-bullying student activism in Nova Scotia.
In September 2007, two Nova Scotia students were praised across North America for the way they turned the tide against the bullies who picked on a fellow student for wearing pink.
The victim a Grade 9 boy at Central Kings Rural High School in the small community of Cambridge wore a pink polo shirt on his first day of school.
Bullies harassed the boy, called him a homosexual for wearing pink and threatened to beat him up, a student said at the time.
Two Grade 12 students David Shepherd and Travis Price heard the news and decided to take action.
They went to a nearby discount store and bought 50 pink shirts, including tank tops, to wear to school the next day. Then the two went online to email classmates to get them on board with their anti-bullying cause that they dubbed a "sea of pink."
The outcome was beyond their expectations when hundreds of students showed up wearing their own pink clothes and asking for ones provided.
