T-shirt project promotes tolerance

LYNN – A group of Lynn teens are recasting the recent incident where Lynn English High officials told a student not to wear a T-shirt proclaiming lesbians are cool as a lesson on social acceptance.On a recent afternoon, teens from a youth group at Lynn’s St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church designed their own T-shirts asserting the cool factor of outcast sections of society.They’ll hang the shirts in the church’s South Common Street entrance, hoping the shirts empower more youth to embrace their inherent weirdness, said Dorothella Littlepage, the assistant pastor at St. Stephen’s.”Everybody has some part of themselves that at one point or another has been told is not cool,” she said. “?This is a way to express that, in God’s eyes, all are cool because God loves us all.”In January, Lynn English Vice Principal Joseph O’Hagan asked sophomore Rachel Bavaro to cover up a shirt she wore to school that said “All the cool girls are lesbians,” a message Principal Thomas Strangie said was “disruptive.”The incident became a national controversy, prompting candidates for Congress, the American Civil Liberties Union and fellow students to chime in on whether Bavaro should have been allowed to continue to wear the shirt.Months later at St. Stephen’s, Lynn English junior Geoff Black got to work painting his own message on a T-shirt, which read “Nerds are cool.”He said the T-shirt helps him remember to feel proud, instead of embarrassed, about his bookworm tendencies.”People were always looking down on me because I was a nerd and always sitting in the back reading a book, and now here I am doing this kind of stuff,” he said.Black said his shirt strikes an inclusive tone, something he said Bavaro’s failed to do.”I think if she had gotten another shirt that had been worded differently, that would have been fine,” he said.But the original T-shirt and its ensuing controversy provided a moment to address anyone in the city who might feel like an outcast, said Jason Cruz, St. Stephen’s youth coordinator.”Lynn still has a lot of growing up to do when it comes to people who are different,” he said.Lynn Vocational Technical Institute junior Guelmi Espinao said he hopes his T-shirt will inspire youth to accept themselves earlier in life instead of going through all the social angst that comes with feeling like an outsider.”It sucks not being able to express yourself,” Espinao said. “? If I could just imagine that I would spare one child six or seven years of that fact before realizing that you can be whatever you want to be, that’d be great.”Jessica Ventura, also a Lynn Tech student, said she hopes the children across the street at the Boys and Girls Club will see the shirts hanging from St. Stephen’s fence.”Maybe they’ll have a different perspective on their lives,” she said.Lynn Classical junior Marcus Garraud said his shirt, which read “Youth is/are cool,” epitomized the entire T-shirt controversy, which swirled around finding the appropriate intersection of youth expression and adult guidance.”This whole thing itself is showing that we’re not all lazy kids who just sit around and do nothing, and we’re definitely not going to sit there and take it,” he said.Amber Parcher can be reached at [email protected].