Students as teachers

Baker High School students spend most of the day learning, but it turns out these teenagers also have lessons to teach all of us.

Important lessons.

The notion that every person ought to be treated with respect, for instance.

When two BHS students saw the need to have a place at the school where they could go and feel accepted and valued, not harassed and belittled, they created a club which requires nothing of its members but that they acknowledge that every one of their classmates is a worthwhile person.

It’s hardly surprising that the club, which both the BHS administration and the student council recently approved, has attracted quite a lot of attention.

Its name — the Gay/Straight Alliance — invokes one of the more divisive social issues going in America.

But then, after a couple of letters critical of the club’s creation were printed on the Baker City Herald’s Opinion page, BHS students taught us another lesson.

Students who had not helped to organize the GSA submitted letters of their own, supporting the club’s founders and their promotion of the idea that the uniqueness of every student should be celebrated.

We doubt any teenager breezes through high school without ever feeling lonely or unsure or just plain scared.

The GSA was formed to give BHS students a refuge when they feel overwhelmed by such emotions. The club’s goal, as described by its founders, of creating a “safe haven” for every student who needs one, obviously resonates with their classmates.

That BHS students think it’s far better that their gay and straight classmates form friendships — alliances, you could say — rather than feuds, is a lesson we suspect some adults would be well-served to heed.