By Ally O’Reilly, Staff Writer
In recent years, the news has been full of sad, happy, inspiring or painful stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students across the world. The topic is even addressed in the new MTV sitcom “Faking It,” which executive producer Carter Covington has based on his days at Reynolds High School.
The openly gay Covington of today contrasts a great deal with the person who graduated from RJR in 1991.
“I was in the closet at Reynolds, and I never even considered coming out,” Covington told the Winston-Salem Journal in an interview that appeared last month prior to the premier of the show. “There were no openly gay students. … (The high school on ‘Faking’ It’) is kind of the high school I wish I could have gone to if I could go back in time and do it all over again – not that I didn’t love Reynolds. I had a wonderful time, but I didn’t even know an openly gay person in high school. I didn’t even know it was possible.”
Covington, who could not be reached via social media or MTV media relations for this story, has produced a hit show about two friends who are falsely “outed” as a lesbian couple by their peers. The girls are not lesbians, but because of all the positive attention they receive from the story, they decide to keep up an act.
There are a lot of places where teenagers are oppressed for who they are, but there are also places where students are both accepted and embraced and given a chance to thrive.
Current students at Reynolds seem to view this school as the latter.
“I think the artsy, swag environment of Reynolds today has a very open and accepting vibe for people to be comfortable in their own skin,” freshman Grace Manning said.
Looking back a few years, however, shows that Reynolds wasn’t always that way. Matt Comer, the editor of an LGBT community publication called QNotes, was a student at Reynolds from 2000 to 2004 and said it was much more difficult to be an openly LGBT person at school when he was here.
“Treatment of LGBT students was different all across society from what it is now,” Comer said. “There were no gay-straight alliances (GSA) at any school… the first one I saw come about was at West Forsyth, then I, along with a few of my friends, started a GSA at Reynolds.
“It was tough to even be involved, due to bullying from other students, pressure from school board members that didn’t want the club in place and even teachers and faculty that were not so supportive of students having a place to be open and work on stuff like issues with bullying at school,” Comer recalled.
The fact Reynolds now has many openly gay students shows how much has changed since Covington and Comer were students here, but that doesn’t mean things are perfect.
“There are a lot of really good LGBTQ student role models at Reynolds who are open about their sexuality and encourage a safe environment for everyone,” sophomore Madeline Saintsing said. “But at the same time there are certain social groups who create a dangerous and threatening environment for people who are still ‘in the closet.’ ”
Teenagers can face a lot of danger in the world for what they are and how they choose to express it, and Comer believes it is the school’s job to ensure that there is safety for all students, specifically LGBT students, for at least the time they are on school property.
“The six, seven or eight hours students are on campus may be the only safe time for students to be open with who they are, because even if students are out, they may only be out at school,” Comer said. “They may have to go back home and go back to hiding in a closet because their parents or other family members don’t know who they really are.”
