BY ANDREA HOUSTON – Plan on wearing pink tomorrow (Feb 29) to stand in solidarity against bullying and homophobia for the fifth annual Pink Shirt Day.
Pink Shirt Day started in 2007 when two Nova Scotia students, David Shepherd and Travis Price, decided to take a stand after they saw a Grade 9 student attacked by a group of bullies after wearing a pink shirt to school.
The bullies called him “fag” and “homo” and threatened to kill him if he ever wore pink again, the Chronicle Herald reported.
Shepherd and Price decided to take action. That night they bought as many pink shirts as they could find in thrift shops around town and distributed them to their friends to wear the next day at school.
Almost every student in the school showed up wearing a pink shirt. Price says, “The bullies got angry. One guy was throwing chairs [in the cafeteria]. We’re glad we got the response we wanted.”
According to Shepherd, when the bullied kid saw the group of students in the pink shirts, “he was all smiles. It was like a big weight had been lifted off his shoulder.”
Since then, Pink Shirt Day has spread across North America as a day for students and adults everywhere to stand up to bullying.
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