Feb. 26, 2014 Santiago High School participated in Pink Shirt Day by encouraging all students to wear pink to support anti-bullying. What began with two Nova Scotia students taking a stand against bullying, has now become a nation-wide day of recognition.

In 2007, David Shepherd and Travis Price (from Nova Scotia) rallied several of their male classmates to wear pink tank tops to support a freshman who had been bullied for wearing the same color. They sent out messages and bought 50 pink tank tops, which they began distributing in the center of their school as a way of showing their protest against the harassment. Since then, February 26 has been deemed Anti-Bullying Day and students are asked to continue the actions of the two heroes by wearing pink to show their support.

In efforts to raise awareness, UNITY posted flyers around school to motivate others to join them in sporting pink shirts in addition to holding one of their monthly UNITY forums. UNITY is a leadership group focused on anti-discrimination that works towards unifying the school and the community. At these forums, selected students meet with UNITY leaders on campus where they participate in small and large group activities and gain a new perspective of the world around them.

“This forum felt different from the rest because so many people were unified in supporting something that happened that they didn’t know about until now,” Aspen Haywood (12) said.

There was mass support shown by the number of Santiago students that participated in the anti-bullying protest by wearing various shades of pink. UNITY encourages all students to raise awareness about this fight against bullying throughout the rest of the year.