Students gather to brainstorm response to Add the Words bill failure
University of Idaho student Kory Scyphers participates in the TabiKat drag show every year, and said she never feels safe going out alone after the event due to the discrimination she could potentially face.
“I always walk to my car with someone, because I don’t feel safe,” Scyphers said.
Last week, the Idaho House State Affairs Committee voted on party lines to kill the Add the Words bill in committee. The bill would have added the words “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to Idaho’s existing Human Rights Act to protect those who identify with the LGBT community from discrimination.
Samantha Hansen, chair of the Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) and co-chair of UNITY, a multicultural umbrella organization, said she was disturbed to hear the bill failed. Now she is calling on her fellow students and the UI community to take action.
Hansen called for a meeting Friday to establish a UI response to the bill’s failure. Nineteen students convened at the Student Diversity Center on campus to brainstorm ideas of how to effectively protest the killing of the bill.
“It’s important to us to have a response as soon as possible,” Hansen said. “So that the issue can be kept at the forefront of the people’s minds.”
Michelle Shannon, a UI student and supporter of the Add the Words bill, attended the meeting because she wants to be active in her community and let her voice be heard.
“I will take a stand for people who don’t feel like they can, or don’t feel that they are in a safe place to do so,” Shannon said.
To take immediate action, some students from the group decided to carpool to the town halls of both Post Falls and Lewiston Saturday where local legislators were scheduled to meet at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.
The group of Vandals stood in the back — along with LGBT supporters from the surrounding areas — with their hands over their mouths. Hansen said covering the mouth is a representation of the Idahoans who have been silenced for the past nine years, while the Add the Words campaign has been present, but unsupported by lawmakers. The students wore black to show they were mourning the death of the bill, and invited others to do the same.
Unlike some, Scyphers wasn’t surprised the proposal died in committee.
“I didn’t have any hopes for it,” Scyphers said. “I’m really upset that it didn’t pass. I think it needs to pass. I think it’s really important, and I think it is really terrible that our State Representatives that we elected didn’t do that, but I was also expecting it.”
Though some may have expected it, the decision disappointed all of the students who have since banded together to publicly oppose it.
“It’s important to hold them accountable, they’re not representing the people,” Hansen said. “These are people we might not want to elect again.”
Hansen talked with organizers of Add the Words campaign and found the protestors’ reaction will be multi-tiered. Eventually, Hansen said they would like to join with the Add the Words campaign in Boise, but first they are going to have a separately organized student response.
“Idaho youth does not agree with this miscarriage of justice,” Hansen said.
Next, Hansen plans to get in contact with the filmmaker of the 2014 Add the Words movie, Cammie Pavesic, to see if she could bring the film to Moscow. Hansen said she would like to achieve solidarity between the diversity groups on campus, so they have a greater chance of progressing toward equality.
On March 10, members of the LGBT community in Moscow intend to take buses to Boise to attend a showing of the Add the Words documentary. The idea of bringing the UI community down to Boise was introduced by ASUI Director of Diversity Viviana Gonzalez. There, they plan to rally with other supporters of the Add the Words campaign, hoping to enact change and spread equality to all Idahoans, Shannon said.
Jamie Lunders can be reached at [email protected]