'I can look around and see kids like me': Howard County school system hosts inaugural 'Pride Prom'

Jun. 13—Oakland Mills High School ninth-grader Axyl Fein smiled after dancing to the upbeat tunes of Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" and "Y.M.C.A." by The Village People.

"It's a classic," said Fein, 15, who requested both songs. "They gotta play that."

Fein was among the more than 80 attendees who danced, laughed and posed for pictures at the Howard County Public School System's first-ever "Pride Prom," held June 10 at the Harriet Tubman Cultural Center in Columbia.

"It's not a traditional prom in many ways," said Howard High School senior Ruy Pastora, 17, who served on the event's planning committee. "So it was really nice to see it come together."

The prom welcomed allies and members of the LGBTQIA+ community from all 12 county public high schools, who gathered for a night of celebration and acceptance. Along with dancing, activities included a photo booth, game room, a quiet room, and a movie room, where students gathered to watch the 2020 musical "The Prom."

"Not everybody likes dancing," said Mount Hebron High School sophomore Brennan Pritchard, 15, a planning committee member who organized an escape room puzzle. "It was really important to me to make it more accessible to people."

Pride Prom served as the culmination of the second annual Howard County Public School System's Pride Week and was part of a growing number of events held to uplift LGBTQIA+ students and educational resources throughout the district.

"It's really important to raise our student voice and have them be able to be seen and heard and valued through the work," said Danielle Du Puis, who is finishing her first year as the school system's inaugural LGBTQIA+ initiatives specialist. "Most [of] what I do is student-driven. Whatever kids want and need, I try to make that happen."

Other pride-centered initiatives this year included a Read the Rainbow book club, the fourth volume of the Rainbow Vision literary magazine and the district's first in-person Rainbow Conference, held May 6 at the Homewood Center.

Du Puis noted that her current position does not have a budget and the events rely on funding from community donations, grants and partners like the Community Allies of Rainbow Youth and the county's Office of Human Rights and Equity, the latter of which co-sponsored the prom. She hopes to increase the capacity of HCPSS Pride even more next year as the number of student interns grows from two to six.

"This year was especially eye opening when there were just so many opportunities for all students," said Matthew Dietrich, 17, a senior at Hammond High School and HCPSS Pride intern. "The last two years have been a really large step in the right direction about how to be more inclusive in our school system."

Increasing visibility in the school system

Ellicott City resident Ash Baker, who is nonbinary, said the district's LGBTQIA+ student community is far more visible now than when they graduated from Mount Hebron in 2015.

"It just did not occur to me for a long time that I might be part of the community because it seemed so 'other,'" Baker said. "I was really only learning about it through media, through television that did include queer characters like Degrassi," from the long-running teen media franchise.

Baker now serves as the vice chair of the county's LGBTQIA+ Commission, which was established in July 2022. They said they're heartened to see a more diverse range of voices featured in Howard classrooms, including an LGBT studies course that will be available to all high schoolers next school year.

"I can think back to my own experience of being in elementary school and experiencing gender dysphoria," they said. "But I had no idea that that's what it was, because I didn't have the language, I didn't have the representation."

In their position as an instructor and research specialist with the county's library system, Baker offers a series of LGBTQIA+ 101 classes to help adult residents learn more about gender identity, gender expression and different sexual orientations. Baker says a lack of information, along with misinformation disseminated through news outlets and social media, is one of the greatest challenges still facing the community.

"It really is true that when kids are just exposed to diverse representation that accurately reflects reality, it is not a big deal to them," said Baker, who was also a member of the Pride Prom Planning Committee. "It's a lot of adults that take issue with it because they didn't grow up with it and so it's still something that's 'other' to them."

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Since the 2021-22 school year, all 77 schools in the district also have maintained at least one Rainbow Representative, a staff member dedicated to creating a more welcoming environment for LGBTQIA+ students and providing instructional support for fellow teachers.

"My goal as an English teacher is allowing my students to see themselves in every book and every lesson that we do," said Sasha Knight, the Rainbow Representative at Ellicott City's Folly Quarter Middle School, who volunteered at the prom.

Knight says it's especially important for LGBTQIA+ youth to feel supported in schools given they face disproportionate rates of suicide and mental health issues.

"The most challenging things that kids should have to face in school is how they're going to learn that math problem or how they're going to write effectively," Du Puis said. "When our young people have thoughts occupying their brains about fear of being accepted, then they don't have the capacity and the space to learn."

Standing in the Harriet Tubman Cultural Center's hallway, Pritchard said the prom made them feel like LGBTQIA+ students' voices matter.

"It makes me feel a lot more accepted here, like I am valuable, I'm important," they said. "I can look around and see kids like me and we don't have to be afraid and don't have to worry."

To learn more about HCPSS Pride, visit: https://sites.google.com/hcpss.org/hcpssrainbowconference/home.