By Alisha George
Editor-in-Chief
The incident involving the actor from “Spring Awakening” brings up some important issues concerning sexual orientation and other problems on campus and in the world.
One issue is the overall ignorance and the lack of acceptance of the LGBT community. In college, learning should take place not just inside, but also outside of the classroom. The play should be applauded for bringing such important societal issues to campus.
If this occurrence tells us anything, it’s that WC needs to take a more firm and aggressive stand against sexual discrimination to protect all students and make those in the LGBT community feel safe and comfortable on campus.
Many offices and clubs work to spread acceptance of sexual orientation on campus, but they can only do so much through events. Change will come from within the student population. We must correct our peers when they use “gay” derogatorily or say negative comments about different sexual orientations.
Another part of that is having reasonable reactions to accusations of sexual orientation, whether true or not. Even if it’s meant as an insult, one should take the opportunity to educate the accuser about having respect for the LGBT community and the importance of not using those labels in a discriminatory way.
I also challenge the school to address how the incident could have had possible disastrous effects on a senior thesis production. I commend senior Jory Peele for directing someone to take the place of the actor on such short notice and still having a great production. Though I know the school had to react in this situation, I think since it was so close to the production opening, an exception perhaps could have been made to preserve the work of a deserving senior.
As a community, we need to learn from this incident and work to better protect students, faculty and staff members in the future from discrimination of this or any other kind.