Gender Symposium Day
On April 18, Grace High School held its first Gender Symposium Day. The event was co-hosted by the student-lead FEM and SPECTRUM clubs and featured different student-led symposiums throughout day. The symposiums focussed on gender roles and sexual consent both at school and in greater society. Different sessions included: “Why Pink and Blue?,” “Empowering Women in The Workplace,” and “Stop Interrupting Me: Gender Dynamics in The Classroom.” Ms. Laurence, Dean of Student Life, curated the Gender Symposium Day, and students volunteered with individual ideas to run their own workshops.
According to Ms. Laurence, it was a “Day-long event on topics relating to gender and consent. The day [included] outside speakers, student-run and professionally facilitated workshops, and fishbowl discussions to bring conversations about gender equality, human sexuality, healthy relationships and more to the attention of the GCS student body.”
Each of these symposiums helped explore and explain exactly what in society defines gender dynamics their stereotypical roles and how we can change the influence they have in our society. In the symposium that I attended, “Stop Interrupting Me: Gender Dynamics in The Classroom,” the presenters, Ellen Jorgensen ‘19, Jenna Hua ‘18 and Isabel Jakob ‘19, gave the class three different scenarios in which a girl was being discriminated against due to her gender in a classroom. It was interesting to see the way that the class dissected these different plots, given that a majority of the class was not able to see the gender discrimination in place in the stories.
I asked Ellen about her how she think her symposium went, and she had positive remarks. “It went really well. Our presentation was solid but it also split into some really good comments.” She also expressed that she was surprised that, “Some girls were shocked by the statistics we read about girls feeling less confident to speak in class. It helped me realize that in order to change dynamics in the classroom, we need to educate boys and girls on what people are experiencing.” She mentioned that she saw some shocked faces in the crowd when reading aloud real-life scenarios that had happened at Grace relating to gender. She is glad that her workshop helped ground the issue in our specific school environment and bring more awareness to the subject.
I also asked a student who had attended Ellen’s symposium about her thoughts: Parker Larsen ‘19 explained that she thought, “The symposiums on consent were extremely important and useful for the entire community.” Unfortunately, she candidly said that she did not learn anything more than she had already known, because she was placed in a symposium at random, but that it was helpful to have a refresher on what she already knew.
When asked if they would participate and/or run a symposium next year, both students were optimistic. Ellen said, “I would absolutely do it again. I think I’d want to do a similar topic because I think it’s really important to bring up issues that affect us all right now. Although our community does a lot of things right, it’s important to examine what we can improve in our classrooms.” Parker responded in a similar way, saying “I would definitely do one next year. Consent and sex positivity are two symposium topics I think people would benefit from and have never been discussed in any of my regular health classes at school throughout my life.”