An affinity group is a collection of people that come together to create safe spaces to express themselves and improve the equity within our communities. Here at BC High, we actively try to promote diversity and inclusion through our many affinity groups, but there is much room for improvement.  After interviewing just a few groups at BC High, it was clear that budget, communication, and transportation were just some of the biggest challenges for a group to overcome. 

One of the leaders of HLA, or the Hispanic Latino Association, Mrs. Basin commented, “When we would have speakers for HLA, we had to go down to the cafe and ask if they had any spare food from the day.” She then said that holding socials and speakers is very difficult when it all depends on the school’s response. For example, the HLA Social, which is a dance organized by HLA, relies heavily on the response from the school, and if even they are one person short the social has to be canceled because of lack of budget. Mrs. Basin said also that a lot of her support came from the parents of the community, whether by helping fund or by providing food for the events, but should they be responsible for these kinds of events. Along with the restricting budget, transportation was a huge issue and how it was taking away from the collaboration between BC High and its sister schools. 

Two of the leaders from CGSO had much to say about their current position in the school as well. Like Mrs. Basin, Mr. Shaw agreed with the struggles of budgeting and transportation. Mr. Shaw had said that it takes so much time and effort to plan simple meetings with our sister school’s GSA (Gay Straight Association). This was echoed in another leader’s response; Ms. Gourlis also said that transportation was a struggle because of the lack of a budget, which was a rather familiar story. The thing that differentiates CGSO from HLA’s report is that CGSO does not have the support of parents, which only furthers the struggles that they experience.

From these two clubs, it is clear that there is a common issue when it comes to trying to build connections and raise awareness. If they were able to not need to worry as much about budgeting, the respective affinity group would flourish, which would raise equity and inclusiveness within the BC High community. The amount of effort that a group leader and even student leaders put in to try and make events happen should not be a difficult challenge, with even just a small baseline budget or more accessibility to transportation a huge weight would be lifted off these leaders shoulders. Of course this baseline would fluctuate depending on the size of the gathering, but the aforementioned leaders said that a 15% baseline would be very beneficial. And on the matter of transportation, the single mini bus is not a good way of transportation because of its size. So, a possible solution for that matter could be to invest in larger buses or at least have more than one minibus. 

This article is not to say that the school is doing bad, because that is simply not true. All that is being said is that there is room for improvement and with enough collaboration and awareness about these issues, the community would be able to grow ever stronger and be able to raise awareness more effectively within it.