With clubs ranging from Red Cross and Economics to Model UN and Debate, the Parker Upper School club landscape has expanded significantly in the last few years as high schoolers grow more and more passionate about expressing their interests. As clubs continue to grow, however, the regulations and rules surrounding them do as well.

Upper School Dean Christian Bielizna’s first year at Parker in 2016 brought a slew of new club rules and regulations, most significant of which was the Club Charter. The Charter asks about club elections, management, leadership, finances, and more. According to the Charter, POCA (Parker Organization of Clubs and Activities) “requires that all Upper School organizations have a Club Charter on file with the Upper School Dean of Student Life Office,” and “Clubs must have Club Charters on file in order to be recognized by POCA.”

As a Committee in Student Government, Pride Committee’s bylaws outline the rules under which they host affinity meetings for students. According to Head Emma Adelstein, under Pride Committee is Pride Affinity, which queer or questioning students can attend. Separate from these meetings are ally meetings, which are open to the entire high school.

According to Pride Heads sophomore Carter Wagner and senior Olivia Garg, these bylaws create confusion over the expectation for clubs to have a roster and email list to submit to their advisor. “We can’t have a list of all queer kids in the school because that’s a safety issue,” Wagner said. “We have kids in the closet on our email list, and if someone else sees their email, it could be really dangerous for someone else to tell people that that student is gay.”

Garg shared similar concerns. “Hate against people in the queer community is prevalent, and you can’t just look at people and tell,” Garg said. “We want other people to come to our meetings too, but if we have a list then anyone who is questioning their sexuality wouldn’t always get the email.” According to Garg, the Pride Committee Heads (which includes Garg and Wagner, as well as senior Emma Adelstein and sophomore Aidan Weinberg) sent Bielizna an email listing the various reasons why there should not be a definite list, and Bielizna accepted that various affinity groups may not have an explicit set of members.

Wagner believes that in aiming to regulate clubs, the Club Charter enforces rules that subdue the otherwise sporadic characteristic of a club. “The Charter works as one club fits all, and that doesn’t work for every club,” Wagner said. “It’s trying to regulate something that is inherently chaotic.”

Pride Committee’s issues with the new club regulation span outside of the Club Charter.  An email from Bielizna cornering regulations on Halloween costumes stated, “gender identity is not a costume–don’t dress trans if you are not trans,” and “sexual identity is not a costume–don’t dress as a gay figure if you are not gay.”

According to Wagner, the biggest problem with the rules was the prohibition of presumably straight students dressings as gay icons or characters. Wagner believes that when the rules prohibit students from dressing or acting a certain way, it hurts those who may not be out or those who merely wish to express themselves. “If a straight person wants to dress as Elton John, they shouldn’t get pulled aside,” Wagner said. “When you compare that to saying you can’t dress as someone of another race, it’s a problem because someone may be in the closet and you can’t tell them how they identify.”

In compiling the original email to the Upper School, Bielizna had taken information from a nationally recognized source that provided a “no-no list” of sweeping blanket statements regarding costumes. After corresponding with the Pride Heads, Bielizna recognizes the difficulty in making such statements.

“There’s no person in the community making judgment calls about how Parker students are representing themselves,” Bielizna said. “In conversation with them, there was a heightened sensitivity to what we were communicating to the community,”

While Pride Heads respected the statements from Bielizna email, it was in the underlying message that they found issues. “Regarding being a gay figure for Halloween is simple: gay figures would love to know that they are accepted and people can dress up as them,” Garg said. “We just don’t want people dressing up as a stereotype, and if you dress as a gay figure, people would know you’re gay.”

Bielizna understands the restrictions the email placed on students, especially after a discussion with the Heads. “A gay figure can be a hero or somebody that a student wants to emulate, and that shouldn’t necessarily be suppressed,” Bielizna said. “Instead of excluding people whose sexuality or gender conformity meets those requirements, everyone should be included.”

The Pride Heads, according to Garg, would rather have someone offend with their Halloween costume than block off an entire category of costumes. “We could learn from it and understand why it was bad, who it hurts, and we’ll try again next year,” Garg said. “An automatic takedown of something we didn’t discuss it wrong, and you can’t just close the door on the issue.”

Pride Committee Heads agree that their job as both an affinity group and a club is to inform students and answer questions. When others enforce rules on Pride, such as the Halloween restriction on costumes, the Heads are left not knowing why and are unable to answer questions or concerns of students, though Bielizna hopes Committees will contact him with any concerns. “The reason for Pride is for us to talk about issues and questions, and we do know a lot that’s going on in the community, but we have discussions for a reason,” Wagner said. “They made rules without consulting us, and when people come up and ask why they can’t dress up, we didn’t make the rules so we can’t answer.”

Pride Committee voiced their concerns to Bielizna and drafted an email with him for next year’s Halloween. And, Garg acknowledges, junior boys can still dress up as Ariel (as junior Rob Currie did this year), but donning a boa and proclaiming yourself as gay is where the stereotypes become dangerous.