# @macjournalism on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/CqDlxoigBCG
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/11216146-macjournalism-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/thumbnails/0e07fe4713.jpg
- **Posted:** 2023-03-21T15:31:50.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** McCallum Journalism (@macjournalism) — https://gondola.cc/macjournalism

## Caption

“PRIDE-IFYING” MAC: The @spectrum_at_mac club, also known as the Gay Student Alliance for MAC, kicked off the first day of AISD PRIDE Week decorating the main hallway with pride flags and distributing stickers yesterday during lunch. 

With a budget allocated by Principal Nicole Griffith the Spectrum club purchased flags and stickers to hand out to students as well as decorations used to “pride-ify” the halls according to Spectrum leader junior Marshall Clifton. 

“The message that I want to send to students on campus is just that it’s so much more than tolerated to be queer [at McCallum],” Clifton said. “We celebrate queerness and what it means to be yourself outside of what society might deem as normal. Everyone deserves to celebrate that whether you are in the community or not.” 

Though the official PRIDE Month is not until June, AISD has hosted a PRIDE Week during the school year since 2014. 

“I know that this isn’t when everyone else celebrates PRIDE, but I love that AISD takes a moment in the year to celebrate,” Griffith said. “We can’t celebrate during the summer because all of our students are here, so taking that extra step so we can have that PRIDE Week where we validate and celebrate and empower students and staff and their families to feel that there is a place for them here is really important.”

Griffith compared the current environment favorable to her experience as a student growing up in a less tolerant age where it was much harder to LBBTQ+ students to be visible and free to express themselves. 

“This whole generation is so much more accepting,” Griffith said. “As an educator I think back to my own time as a middle and high school student and there was zero representation and certainly no representation so to be able to see young people embrace diversity is really refreshing because that is not the world I grew up in.” 

Today the Spectrum club will be hosting a Q&A panel in the library during lunch to answer any questions regarding LGBTQ+. 

Photos by Julia Copas, Lillian Gray, Shila Gill and Morgan Eye. Caption by Morgan Eye.

#aisdproud

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## Credits

| Name | Username | Profile | Role |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| McCallum Journalism | @macjournalism | https://gondola.cc/macjournalism | Newspaper |
| Julia Copas | @julia_copas | https://gondola.cc/julia_copas | Photographer |

## Tags

aisdproud

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