BHS club receives award for addressing difficult topics

When it began in 2017, Upstanders United was an invitation-only club composed of mostly Blaine High School seniors. They had big ideas about speaking out to the school about taboo topics, but the club had a longevity issue. Without underclassmen to eventually take the helm, who would continue to lead Upstanders United in the future?

Two years later, the club’s current leaders are facing the same question. During a recent lunch period, the nine dedicated members of Upstanders United met in the classroom of their advisor, science teacher Ellie Weeks. Mostly juniors and seniors, the young women discussed recruitment with their club coordinator.

“Our numbers are dwindling because the majority of us are seniors,” Associated Student Body (ASB) president and high school senior Samantha Boczek said. “We’re working on advertising to the younger classes.”

“Freshmen aren’t involved as much, which is weird,” another club member said to the others. Efforts to reach underclassmen with a club assembly and by visiting their advisory classes proved fruitless, as did the mass email club leader and senior Payton Ives sent out to the names on a sign-up list.

Upstanders United formed as a way to combat this sort of indifference. The club has addressed difficult topics like mental health, consent and healthy relationships, all within the few short years of its existence.

When she worked with the Bellingham-Whatcom County Commission on Sexual and Domestic Violence, Liz Stuart supported the founding of Upstanders United at Blaine High School. As the club’s coordinator, she helps direct the students to helpful and supportive services.

“I was co-advising the group,” Stuart said. “I’ve helped them by providing materials and tools that they review. Some of the awesome things that they’ve done have really been building peer education at the school.”

Some of this peer education has included informative assemblies and themed weeks with activities relating to self-care. Last year’s Consent Event provided a youth summit for the whole county to participate in and discuss the importance of consent in healthy relationships.

Most recently, at the beginning of October, the club showed an anti-bullying video that they made at a school assembly.

“While we were playing the video, I was looking at the crowd and it was dead silent,” Boczek said. “Nobody was speaking. Everyone was really engaged, and I felt like everyone actually really cared about what was going on in the video.”

Upstanders United does some of their outreach in conjunction with ASB. Currently they are planning Care Week together.

“Last year we focused a lot on healthy relationships, consent and anti-bullying, and I kind of want to pull some of the origins of why Upstanders United started into what we’re doing this year,” Ives said.

The club has endured through word-of-mouth communication and by encouraging people to bring their friends to meetings. Ives and her co-leader Emma Nash have been facilitating the club meetings. They were some of the club’s original members when they were sophomores back in 2017.

At the beginning of this school year, they learned that their club had won the Youth Award from the Whatcom Dispute Resolution Center in Bellingham for creating a more inclusive, connected and caring school environment. Upstanders United will be honored at the 17th Annual Peace Builder Awards Gala on Friday, November 15.

This acknowledgement was an opportunity for the members of Upstanders United to realize that their voices have been heard.

“I was overjoyed,” Ives said. “It takes a lot of courage to talk about topics like consent, healthy relationships and mental health. A lot of people in our club feel as if we’re not appreciated. So especially being recognized with an award like that, it was really humbling for me.”