Hello all, long time no see! 

As we enter the 2021-22 school year, I just have to say that I love writing my opinion. Something about telling people off through a work of literature just screams “power” to me. Now, let’s get into the heat of things and I’m not talking about this godforsaken 114-degree-heat.

As most of you know, I’m gay. For those of you that didn’t know that, SURPRISE! (I’ve only been here for 4 years….) But, that’s not why I brought that up. 

Last week, it was brought to our attention through an email from Dean of Students Jeff McKay that a Pride flag was stolen from an off-campus residency, specifically the property of the Delta Psi Delta fraternity. 

Now, nobody knows if this was done with malicious intent, but I doubt it was damn Goldilocks trying to just eat Delta’s porridge either! 

Look, if there’s one thing that I love about being gay, it’s the sense of community that every LGBTQ+ person is part of. We may not all like each other (and there are MANY members of this community that peeve me off), but at the end of the day, we’re still a die-hard family because we have faced the hardships of this world together. If you stole THEIR Pride flag, then you stole MY pride flag. 

The sad thing is that this kind of shit happens everywhere, everyday. It’s not new and it’s an ongoing problem at Linfield and in the world in general, so I’m not surprised.

Through my four years at Linfield, I can count with my fingers the amount of LGBTQ+ students that have walked these halls. I don’t want to be that person that says a lot of minorities are misrepresented, but a lot of the time, that seems to be the case. And the consequences just seem to be a slap on the wrist and a “do-better attitude”. 

It’s hard to put yourself in situations that don’t encompass who you are, like how I as white male will never truly understand the hardships of a female African-American and so on and so forth. So, I get that it’s hard to understand where we as a community are coming from, but things need to change and that comes from the ground up. It’s one thing to say that there will be change but it’s another to take initiative and create that change. 

We are entering a new era at Linfield. With this new era we should hope to be better, we should hope to do better and we should lift each other up rather than tear each other’s flag down. 

This issue doesn’t just encompass LGBTQ+ people, it encompasses the entire student body. I always thought being gay was what made me inferior to others, but in fact, being gay is what gave me freedom to be who I am and express myself to everyone around. And I don’t know about you but that sounds pretty fun to me 😉