JA! on Library

Ness McLeod

November 16, 2020 8:55 PM

I vote for change (a petition) by Ness McLeod

Last year's head student ballot had honestly been a... Ness tried to think of school-appropriate words for it but couldn't. Mess. It had been a mess. They had been stuck choosing between two candidates both of whom the vast majority of them disliked, and were now stuck with hard right head students. Of course, given the voting base had chosen Nathaniel over Heinrich, it indicated things would have gone that way anyway - Heinrich had been the only decent candidate and he had been passed over. That, or the make up of the voters, wasn't fixable but the fact that the sytem was broken was. Or at least was arguable against. And arguing was one of the things that Ness did best.

The sixth year had checked with Mr. Fox-Reynolds that using the library notice board for this purpose was acceptable, and (having received his approval) nailed some colours to that mast.

Petition to Reform Head Student Elections

The current system of voting for a head boy and girl is deeply flawed due to the following issues:

- presumes all students fit within a gender binary and is exclusionary to those who do not
- presumes that the best qualified candidates will always be one boy and one girl, which may not always be the case
- can lead to candidates getting the position by default rather through merit

We the undersigned believe that all voters should be entitled to choose their preferred two candidates irrespective of gender.

All ages are welcome to sign.

Subthreads:

Supporting the petition by Hilda Hexenmeister with Evelyn Stones

Words are hard. by Johana Leonie Zauberhexen

JA! by Freddie Zauberhexen

Equality is important. by Henry Spellman

13 Ness McLeod I vote for change (a petition) 1419 1 5

Hilda Hexenmeister

November 17, 2020 7:25 AM

Supporting the petition by Hilda Hexenmeister

Hilda saw the petition when she wandered into the library to find some supplemental materials for her first essay as a fifth year and a prefect, which she expected would be graded more critically than her essays as a fourth year. If she was very lucky, she’d find some in German, but she had her pocket professor to help her through an English book if necessary. She did not need his help for the petition though. In any previous year she wouldn’t have bothered even looking at the bulletin board. This year, her sense of perfectly responsibility made her feel she needed to know what was going on in the school, and her English had improved enough that it was not completely daunting to try.

The petition made sense. She only had to look around her own year to see the girls outnumbered the boys and of the twelve prefects in the school, only two were boys and both Heinrich and Nathaniel were about to graduate. If the teachers hadn’t deemed any of fifth or sixth year boys the best option for prefect in their Houses, why should they be deemed better than all the girls to serve the school as a Head Student?

Quite simply, they shouldn’t.

Hilda added her name to the petition.

Hilda Hexenmeister

1 Hilda Hexenmeister Supporting the petition 1433 0 5

Evelyn Stones

November 17, 2020 3:28 PM

You've got my vote. by Evelyn Stones

Evelyn had very little at stake and very much at stake in Ness' petition all at once. While she herself was . . . maybe half-blood? - She wasn't sure still since she came from two strong pureblood family lines with just one major exception. - and identified in a way that satisfied Sonora's gender binary, her best friend did not. Her boyfriend had almost certainly been passed over for the position because he wasn't as high society as Nathaniel Mordue, a fact which bothered Evelyn more than she liked to admit, especially since she was also Nathaniel's friend. Not to mention the fact that her own year was made up of almost entirely girls, with two boys and one Ness, and it didn't seem fair that all the girls would be competing against each other and the boys had very little competition. Everyone, it seemed, should get a fair shot at the position because of their merit, as Ness said, not because of their name or gender identity.

It was not a hard decision then, for her to add her name to the petition. She also would make sure to tell Ness just how proud she was to be the Aladren's friend. It was a bit mindblowing to think of the long-term changes that this could effect on Sonora. Maybe someday she'd get to ask CJ about that. With a happy rush of pride, Evelyn added her name, with the middle initial because it felt like it should be formal:

Evelyn J. Stones

22 Evelyn Stones You've got my vote. 1422 0 5

Johana Leonie Zauberhexen

November 17, 2020 8:07 PM

Words are hard. by Johana Leonie Zauberhexen

OOC: CW: anti-LGBTQ thoughts BIC:

Johana Leonie didn't understand everything on the notice that was posted in the library, but if there were ever a place that she was going to whip out a German-English dictionary and start deciphering such things, it was the library. She spent a lot of time doing just that in this place, although it was usually reserved only for one of the tables set up around in the vastness. The fact that there was a familiar name - that of one of her favorite people - on the petition already did draw her eye though, and she found she was all the more motivated to figure it out.

When she did, she hesitated. It was talking about a gender binary. It was talking about that thing she tried not to think about. Well, maybe it really wasn't. Friederike Albert still called himself a boy and maybe that's what he was still. She couldn't see how he could be anything else anyway, but she tried to be open to it. At least a little. Still, she was glad he was just a boy, even if a weird one. But . . . what if someone tried to say that he couldn't be a head b-- student just because he liked to wear dresses? What if they didn't allow it because he was different? Anger replaced hesitation and she set her jaw.

No one was going to tell Friederike Albert what he could or couldn't do because he was the nicest bo-- person anyone would ever have the pleasure to meet. With a flourish, she added her name:

Johana Leonie Zauberhexen

She walked away wondering if Friederike Albert would see it. She didn't want him to see it to make herself look good - she was pretty sure that publicly signing your name to something like that was not a good way to make yourself look good anyway - but she did want him to know. To know she cared. To know she was trying. To know that she wanted him to be able to be Head Student some day, even if he wasn't a boy someday. Even if that didn't make any sense to her at all.

22 Johana Leonie Zauberhexen Words are hard. 1432 0 5

Freddie Zauberhexen

January 21, 2021 5:14 PM

JA! by Freddie Zauberhexen

Freddie saw the petition and wasn't too surprised, although he was excited. What did surprise him was seeing his sister's name there, and that was even more exciting. He wasn't too sure how much she really stood by it herself and how much it was because Hilda had signed it first, but it was exciting nonetheless. Freddie wasn't even sure how much it mattered why she'd signed it but he couldn't help feeling like it maybe didn't in this case. Hana was famously preoccupied with her social image and in this case, she'd sided loudly with a stigmatized group. Of course, in their own family background, she was actually one of the only ones who thought the whole thing was stigmatized.

He'd bounced into the library as quietly as he could manage just in case there were people studying but he let out an excited little coo when he saw his sister's signature and he promptly added his own:

Freddie!

He was the only Freddie, so it was probably fine. He couldn't help feeling like he'd done something important by signing the petition and he thought it was sort of funny to sign something important with a name that was important to him. He was Freddie, not just Friederike Albert, and being a Zauberhexen was important but it was not the whole bit of who he was. Being 'Freddie' encompassed all of that all by itself. So that's what he wrote, and then he bounced away, grinning happily to himself.

22 Freddie Zauberhexen JA! 1452 0 5

Henry Spellman

January 21, 2021 5:20 PM

Equality is important. by Henry Spellman

At their old school, there were all sorts of different students. There had been a big drama when two girls had gone to prom together, but that had been years before and the trickle down to Henry's grade meant that basically everyone was pretty chill about stuff. Sure, there were homophobes and transphobes but mom had been pretty clear that that stuff wasn't cool and the Spellman family was granularly pretty open to stuff. It was good to be open to stuff because not enough people were nice to others. It could be dangerous to be nice to others because they could take advantage of you, but you could also really help people. Being at Sonora had just made it clear to Henry that not enough people were nice to others. Wizards, in his not so humble opinion, were not nice enough to 'muggles' and Henry thought that was crap. It didn't surprise him that they were still stuck on some pretty old fashioned gender stuff, but he also didn't know enough about it and himself to get involved normally and it wasn't like it personally impacted him. But that was the thing, wasn't it? It was easy to be hands off when you thought it didn't apply to you.

It felt good to put his name on the petition in the library because it felt like he was leaving his mark at school. Like maybe he would be forgotten at home - except mom, because she wouldn't forget him - but he wouldn't be forgotten here. He probably would be. Like, if he didn't come back the next school year, it wasn't like he really had any friends to miss him. But maybe they would. Maybe they'd miss him a little. Maybe it would matter.

So he put his name down. Henry Spellman And he got to be one of the students who made a difference, even if it was just in a small way. Maybe if there was a student who did care about this stuff more than he did, they'd see his name and know he cared about them, even if he didn't really think they'd want to talk to him anyway. It was good, even if it was hard.

22 Henry Spellman Equality is important. 1513 0 5