High School: A Starting Point For Change
What type of person comes to mind when you hear the phrase “Homecoming Queen”?
Do you picture a male, female or someone who identifies as a different gender?
What is the color of their skin?
Do you share any similarities with this person?
It is too easy to picture the stereotypical Homecoming Queen. It’s almost scary. The most popular and most beautiful and most charming and most feminine? And most white? Largely due to the interconnected mass media culture of today’s modern world, children get bombarded with unrealistic expectations, and women are held to unrealistic standards beginning at a disturbingly young age. Many teenagers already have a good idea of what a Homecoming Queen should be like before even entering high school. This mainstream notion of the “perfect” Homecoming Queen is superficial and objectively shallow to say the least. Luckily for us Chelsea students, we don’t have to support this unhealthy and degrading social construct any longer.
By now, most of the community has heard about Student Council’s decision to adopt the Chelsea Excellence Award in place of electing a traditional Homecoming Queen.
This decision has been received by CHS and the Chelsea community with as much criticism as appreciation. The reaction following the announcement of this “radical” adjustment, however, has not been limited to Chelsea. This decision has likely prompted other high schools to reconsider the long-established Homecoming tradition and the process of getting nominated for Homecoming Queen. This adjustment also poses critical questions to the public: should such a major tradition be abandoned? How do female students feel about primarily being judged by looks and popularity? Can the election process promote bullying or create an unhealthy dynamic between students? And is electing a Homecoming Queen inclusive to everyone, no matter sexual orientation or gender identity? Questions like these have been echoed by students, parents, staff, local news channels, and even the New York Times.
The switch from electing a Homecoming Queen to voting for the Chelsea Excellence Award not only marks a shift in the tradition of Homecoming, but also displays the ability of high school students to create real change in their community. The examination of Chelsea’s past Homecoming tradition was driven by dedicated Student Council members who responded to the requests of the student body. Like the #WhyYouMatter campaign which began in 2017, passionate students fought again for what CHS stands for. Along with students, it is also important to recognize the administration and staff at CHS who provide a supportive avenue for revision and growth in which young adults can thrive.
In this respect, Chelsea High school is unique, as there are very few public high schools who have been able to build such an influential and widespread mechanism of change. Of course, none of this change would be possible without the students of Chelsea who had the courage to place tradition itself under the microscope and dared to ask the hard questions: What do our traditions say about who we are?” and “What do our traditions say about who we want to be?” This process displays the power high school students can harness and the ability of young adults to alter entire social patterns, uproot deeply ingrained tradition and reshape the cultural values of our society.
We embody change.
Ben Zivsak is also known as the “Cool Editor,” but not as cool as Matty of course. He has been with the paper since sophomore year and enjoys nature,...
Annie Hancock • Sep 18, 2018 at 1:00 PM
Instead of changing a tradition that some people look forward to, you should think about how it will effect people. i understand why you people felt like you need to change this tradition because a girl got nominated as a joke… maybe you should raise your children to not be little assholes. Our generation..my generation are just a bunch of lazy kids who are on their phones all day, don’t have jobs, because they don’t need jobs, they get everything handed to them. Don’t make competition a bad thing, not everyone is a winner. If your let children grow up thinking everyone’s a winner, they wont ever put in motivation to do anything in their lives, they never had to, and then the world wil hit them and will realize you have to work for what you want, unless you want to support your kids you’re whole live because they’ve never had to work for anything until now. Some people think this is the best thing ever, because they’ve fallen for the new society that everyone needs to be equal, but that’s probably the dumbest term I’ve ever had to comprehend “equality”. No one is equal. And yes i do believe everyone should have equal rights. But no one is “equal”, I’m not equal to who i was yesterday, today i cold be a complete asshole, and tomorrow i could be a really nice person. Equal means the SAME. No one is the same and i think everyone should be different. So next time you wanna take charge and changes something that means something to some people, take a vote and don’t make decisions for other people.
Joel • Sep 18, 2018 at 12:50 PM
And in a similar vain to #WhyYouMatter, I feel as though the Chelsea Excellency Award will miss the target entirely. There’s a palpable irony to the whole situation to boot: students fed up with the superficial nature of Homecoming Queen devise the solution of changing the superficial qualities of the award. Changing the name to something else doesn’t magically change it to anything other than a popularity contest, it just makes it harder to recognize. That being said, I don’t disagree with the changing of the name. What I do disagree on is how much people praise these changes. What happened ultimately had no effect on homecoming, except opening up the award to be less exclusive.
It’s not terribly hard to fix this, either. The easiest way to solve an award becoming a contest is to remove it. You will always have people who disagree with the way the award was presented and distributed, no matter how hard you try to make it inclusive. By removing the award, Homecoming would become a celebration for all students, not just those who can break the glass ceiling of popularity.
This is a trend that I hate to see in politics, and one that especially rattles my bones when it hits so close to home. The governing student body doesn’t understand what constitutes as positive change, rather makes superficial adjustments to appear more progressive. News flash, being progressive takes real work. Making a hashtag with a few tee shirts doesn’t solve a mental health epidemic in Chelsea, and changing the name of an award can’t save homecoming.
If you want to make change for the better, work from the ground up, rather than the top down. Too often I see people throw solutions at things that aren’t even related to one another. Feeling crushing depression? Easy fix, make them matter. Feeling like homecoming queen is exclusive? Change the name. These solutions aren’t effective, because they aren’t focused on the issue. Real solutions require real analysis into real problems. Chelsea school legislature feels like a Kodak disposable camera: too focused on having the biggest flash, without putting any thought or care into the lasting photograph.