DIVERSITY
SCENE
SPORTS
Pg. 3
Pg. 5
Pg. 7
We need to do something about the transgender genocide in the US
Having pets in college: CWU community members share stories
Vol. 125 NO. 3
Austin Ohland wins GNAC player of the week April 19, 12, 2023
Ellensburg High School students speak out against LGBTQIA+ bullying at board meeting Waste from the Hanford nuclear reactor site in Washington will take until 3033 to clean. Photo courtesy of Pexels
Museum of Culture and Environment panel teaches about dangers of Hanford Anna Fridell Staff Reporter
EHS teacher claims unsatisfactory training Ellensburg High School. Photo by Yohanes Goodell
Megan Rogers News Editor Slashed tires, “f-slurs” and harassment; this is only a portion of what Ellensburg High School (EHS) students reported experiencing from their peers at the board meeting on March 29. EHS students Ashley Callan and Nina Gonzalez spoke at the meeting, and Callan gave an exclusive interview to The Observer about her experiences. At the meeting, Gonzalez said they are frustrated with the administration, and said for all 11 years of their education, they have been bullied both physically and verbally. Gonzalez said it was only when a boy brought a knife to school and threatened them that their counselor did anything. “I’m just as human as you,” Gonzalez said at the board meeting. “I deserve to express myself, but the more I do, the more I am reminded I do not belong here. My education has been taken from me and my passion for learning has been extinguished.” Gonzalez said that despite all of this, they will still continue to speak and share their story to make up for all that has not been done. “I’m still a kid,” Gonzalez said. “It will never be my responsibility to fix the problems you’ve made. It is not my job to cater to how you should believe a high school student should look and act. It is, however, your job to make sure every single student feels safe and respected in a building that is under your control.” At the board meeting, Callan said when she ran for Associated Student Body Public Relations officer last year, she had no idea how bad the harassment and homophobia would be. According to Callan in the meet-
ing, when she ran there was a rumor that a group was running against her to “get the gays out.” “The entire election basically felt like a competition between my sexuality, rather than based off of actual qualification,” Callan said. Callan stated the administration just swept it under the rug, and she would have to go to them to ask for protection. She said in the meeting that she would ask the administration if they could find the people who were slashing her tires and ripping down her campaign posters. “They [administration] told me it was for the people who are hate crime-ing me to protect them, rather than let me know who was out against me in this school, a place where I have to be and I can’t even know who it is,” Callan said in the meeting. According to Callan, the administration still is blocking articles from their school newspaper that talk about the events that happened to her. Callan said she used to love to go to school, but now she will leave school as early as possible and sometimes tries to show up late in the mornings to avoid any of the administration. “If not for me, but for all the other LGBTQIA+ students, please do something,” Callan said. Callan’s interview with The Observer Callan said that since the elections last year, homophobia is still evident at EHS. “Occasionally people would say a slur, and anytime I would bring it up, nothing would actually happen,” Callan said. Callan said that it is unsettling not knowing who these people are that are harassing her.
“I don’t know what my safety is like, because I don’t feel like the school is doing anything to protect me,” Callan said. “If they wanted to beat me up or something, I wouldn’t know and I couldn’t avoid them.” According to Callan, the students at EHS had a walkout protest on April 14, and some students were joking and being homophobic about it. “It was for the Day of Silence, it’s talking about how a lot of LGBTQ+ people are just silenced overall, [but] specifically for our school [it] is the administration,” Callan said. When the students walked out, Callan said some kids were making jokes about the situation and said that they were going to make a roster or registry of all the students at the Day of Silence. Ellensburg High School teachers speak out EHS teachers, Brittanie Wyler and Lorraine Barlow, spoke at the board meeting on March 29. Barlow said during the time of the elections, teachers didn’t know what was going on and that it was frustrating to find out the students were receiving death threats. “I understand the need for protection [by] not letting people know, but as Ashley said, the victims should not be the ones who are not protected,” Barlow said in the board meeting. In the meeting, Wyler said it is frustrating that when a student comes to them with a serious matter, once the information is passed onto administrators, they are no longer allowed to know if anything has been resolved.
Continued on Pg. 3
CWU’s Museum of Culture and Environment (MCE) was packed more densely than steam in a smokestack as attendees filled the seats to learn about the nuclear history of the Hanford site. The MCE hosted artist and author of “Hanford Reach: In the Atomic Field” Glenna Cole Allee, historian and educator Emily Washines, artist Roger Peet and anthropologist Mark Auslander on April 13 to share their expertise on the Hanford site, a former nuclear production site with a legacy of radioactive elements, according to CWU Museum Director Hope Amason. The site is just 65 miles from Ellensburg, located in Benton County, Washington, and is a very controversial aspect to Washington’s history, according to Amason. According to Washines, the planning for the cleanup within the Hanford site reaches all the way to the year 3033. “There was a lot of contentiousness,” Allee said. “There were really different points of view, and it was hard to hold them all at once.” The Hanford site was first utilized during WWII where uranium was processed into plutonium to create nuclear weapons. These weapons would be used in the atomic bombings of Nagasaki, Japan during WWII, while also leaving massive amounts of radioactive waste, according to Peet. The plutonium gathered from the Hanford site contributed to the Trinity Device, the first nuclear weapon to explode on the planet, according to Peet. “The thing that everyone had been working to, the desire to acquire this infinite source of destructive power in order to be able to deny it to other hostiles, to people that were perceived as enemies who were also presumed to be in pursuit of the same kind of power was suddenly unleashed in a manner that nobody really knew at the time,” Peet said. Yakama Nation tribal member, Emily Washines, of Cree and Skokomish lineage, offered her insight to the Hanford site through her experience from Native perspectives. According to Washines, the resources within the site such as
access to food and water are critical to the wellbeing of life around the site. “My responsibility is to speak for the resources,” Washines said. “We protect the resources for those not yet born.” The Columbia River offers an abundance of resources to the community, yet the community aspect seems to be missing from the site’s large scale and technical plans, according to Washines. Washines has early memories of how meals were prepared within her tribe while also relating to the Yakama creation story, beginning with water, then the salmon, deer, elk, roots, berries and completed with water, according to Washines. “That positive chain of life, giving transition from water to salmon to health to deer back to [the] roots. All those things that Emily was characterizing would be undercut by nuclear radiation,” Auslander said. Though Hanford is perceived to have a legacy of radioactive destruction and waste consisting of groundwater leaks and underground tanks, there is also beauty that has come out of the site, according to Amason. “On one end, there’s this legacy of pollution, but there’s also this legacy of [a] great habitat for a lot of different animals and plants that might otherwise have been developed,” Amazon said. The health of those near the site in the 1940s were directly impacted by the radioactive waste, and the effects are still carrying into today, according to Washines. “I have family members that don’t have thyroids, or are on thyroid medication,” Washines said. The MCE previously held an event in 2013 showing the exhibit of Particles on the Wall: Art, Poetry and Science about Hanford, before moving on to WSU Tri-Cities Art Exhibition Center, Richland. Many of the artists struggled because of their connections to those who experienced the lasting effects of exposure to radiation, according to Amason. “What we found was that a lot of the artists really struggled because, on one hand their family members have been exposed to radiation,” Amason said. “And in some cases, people had thyroid cancer and other sort of health concerns as a result.”