Is Trillium a Safe Space After All?

Photo: Ashmeena Kipp

Trillium Charter School prides itself for being a “safe space” for LGBTQ and everyone who attends. One of the ways Trillium is trans-friendly is having a choice of what bathroom you use, boys/girls. Trillium may give you a choice with the bathroom, but both bathrooms boys and girls constantly get covered in hate speech graffiti including drawings of swastikas and lgbtq hate. For an accepting place, Trillium has a large amount of homophobic and transphobic tendencies.

Another incident is a magazine was made and sold that was front to back targeting students with differences of all kinds. The people targeted include gay, lesbian, jewish, mentally disabled, black, trans, etc. Now, I know every school has students who cause problems like these, but what makes a school a safe place is how they handle their problem students. Instead of dealing with its problems, Trillium's administration likes to cope with the aftermath of hate speech related issues and make little to no effort to make sure it doesn't happen again. Trillium needs to learn how to deal with problems, not give up and feel sorry for themselves every time something bad happens.

I can see how the restorative justice system can be helpful. No one wants to kick students out of school. Most public schools suspend students very regularly which can ruin a student's chance to get certain scholarships. However, the purpose of suspension is the student is putting others or themselves in danger. A space where traditional punishment is not usually used creates a feeling of “there are no consequences.” The standard public school punishment in my opinion is more effective because with such a drastic penalty, most students will follow the rules in fear of getting in trouble, opposed to a very light repercussion in the Trillium environment.

I would assume such a claimed "safe space" school would handle these problems well but they don't. The graffiti is a recurring issue that has not been given attention in any way. The only thing being done is painting over, which only lasts a week before it's covered again. I would not expect to read slurs and hate symbols if I want to s*** in a “progressive” school like Trillium.

Recently Trillium has decided to take the doors off the bathroom to better monitor the problems occurring. Their intentions are good, but are also taking privacy away from students and making bathroom trips awkward. Trillium has problems that are yet to be fixed in its goal of being the safe space it claims to be. A school can't be a safe space when you are constantly facing acts of hate towards specific groups of people. Hate is one of the most common and dangerous acts of terrorism, an action meant to inflict fear onto a group of people. Not all terrorists use bombs to make their point –words are just as harmful, if not more.