Gay pride in high school.

• Author: Shaw, Marvin

Gay and Lesbian Pride, proclaims a banner in the showcase at Fairfax High School. The banner and other symbols of gay and lesbian life went up in the high school's main hallway during gay-pride week in June 1994. When the next school year started, the banner was still on prominent display. Project 10, a group of gay and lesbian youth at Fairfax High, and the group's adviser, Virginia Uribe, are responsible for the display, and for the increased support for gay and lesbian students at the school.

Uribe, who has taught life science at Fairfax for thirty years, started Project 10 a decade ago. The plight of one particular student prompted her to take action. An openly gay African-American teenager named Chris came to Fairfax in the mid-1980s, after transferring from school to school because of harassment and persecution. At Fairfax, he began to have the same dreary experience all over again. But for once, the staff at the school reacted with anger. A group of teachers started an effort to prevent it from happening to others. Uribe, supported by other concerned faculty, came up with the idea for Project 10. The name came from the statistic 10 percent - the homosexual portion of the U.S. population, according to the Kinsey studies of the late 1930s and 1940s.

Beginning with rap sessions during lunch hour, students began to explore their identities, the dynamics of a hostile society, and prospects for improving their lives. "Nothing had been done in this area," says Uribe. "We were pioneers in trying to meet this tremendous need."

The project spread to thirty of the other fifty high schools in the Los Angeles Unified Schools District, and is now being replicated in districts around the country.

Project 10's objectives are to foster self-understanding and acceptance among gay and lesbian teens, reduce verbal and physical abuse from the heterosexual majority, prevent suicide, and provide accurate information on AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Teachers, counselors, and administrators have...