People trickle in through the library doors during Ranger Time and begin to cluster around tables. Friends greet friends, and a pride flag is projected proudly on the screen. It’s the first Gender and Sexuality Alliance meeting of the year, and juniors Jude Jecker and Chloe Wallace stand at the front of the room ready to kick off a new year.

The GSA is a club for anyone that wants to learn about queer topics or just wants a safe space to be themselves. They meet every Monday during Ranger Time.

“It’s extremely important for us to have a GSA, and for every public school to have a GSA because for some people that’s their only safe space,” Jecker said. “Home lives can be very messed up, and sometimes people can’t be themselves safely. So having an area where parents don’t even have to know you’re involved in that club, you can just go there and know that you’re in a community that will be there for you and can understand hardships that you’re going through, that’s always important.”

Jecker was the president of the GSA this year, and from the looks of it, they’re going to be the president again this year. Them and their vice president Wallace run the club, do research for different activities, and plan out the meetings.

“I had a lot of fun last year, especially because I got to not only explore myself and help other people explore themselves, but I also got to explore the history I never knew I needed to know,” Wallace said. “There was so much history. Whenever I was like, ‘oh I need to go find a little game we can play.’ or ‘I’m going to go find a little history night we can have.’, and I was like, ‘This happened, like, what?’. I felt like it was just so fun so I really want to do it again.”

In GSA, members learn about queer history, talk about current events affecting the queer community, and sometimes just play fun games. But most of all they just want to foster a safe space where everyone can be themselves.

“I can’t stress this enough, it’s for everyone, everyone can come, everyone can listen in,” Jecker said. “Unless you’re coming to heckle then you can maybe just politely decline. For everyone else it’s a lot of important stuff that isn’t talked about a lot today and especially at all in public school systems, but a lot of the things that impact us today come from queer history, so it’s always important to bring up.”