If any of you have recently walked past the 10th-grade common room, you may have seen a flash of color out of the corner of your eye. That flash is one of Sacred Heart’s newest art installments, a pride flag made entirely out of plastic wrappers. For the entirety of the first semester, some of the GSA’s club members were hard at work, figuring out a design and amassing all the wrappers they needed to complete the project.

“First, we figured out the critical ratio of each color, and every time somebody had a plastic wrapper, we’d ask for it, from anything like PET bottles or even chocolate wrappers,” said Mishaka S. (10). 

The flag compliments the club’s main goal, which club co-leader Hana N. (11) described as, “…informing others about things that are happening in and around the LGBTQI community – it’s not necessarily an issue in our school, we don’t have homophobic issues. But obviously, nobody’s perfect, we don’t have a perfect level of understanding of the community, so I feel it’s our duty to inform others and to provide awareness throughout the school.”

It’s incredible to think that it was way back in 2015 that the United States legalized same-sex marriage, and inspired the creation of a GSA here in Sacred Heart. This flag stands as a reminder of how much the world has grown, and how we as a community have grown with it.

Not only does the flag spread awareness and promote the club’s visibility, but since it’s made out of plastic wrappers, it also endorses the idea of being less wasteful through recycling and upcycling.

In the future, the GSA will be hosting a booth at Family Festival, and they are currently planning to develop a website. The club’s leaders hope this will be a safe place to discuss LGBTQI-related matters and ask questions, regardless if students are members of the GSA or not.

Be sure to keep an eye out for these upcoming projects, and stop by to salute the flag!