Having a place to be free and honest around others is important. Pride Alliance Club is a place of comfort for its members.

“I am based on human connection,” junior Macey Lukas said. “Knowing the club shut down, and you weren’t able to see the friends you made a connection with, it felt like I lost a little bit of home.”

Lukas knows the importance of the Pride Alliance Club to reopen for students. Due to attendance being so small when school first started back in July, Pride Alliance stopped meeting all together. They have two meetings left for the rest of the year, which will take place the last Thursday of April and the last Thursday of May.

The sponsor, math teacher Tim Case, believes that the reopening of the club is a positive thing for the student participants.

“They really need each other, that group,” Case said, “(LGBTQ teens) have the highest suicide rate among teen groups.”

For the upcoming school year, he hopes for the club to be back to where they were before, with more students in attendance and doing their normal group activities.

“There’s no big time goals,” Case said, “there’s no way we’re going to be able to do the things we normally wanted to do.”

In the upcoming school year, Lukas hopes to have more people join due to her own personal experience with her mom.

“She doesn’t really understand. So if she or someone was invited to that group, they probably would have a different perspective,” Lukas said, “what I want people to take from it is to take a second chance to look upon someone they may have misjudged.”

Junior Logan Spencer, another member of Pride Alliance, is thankful for the club’s reopening because students now have a safe place again.

“A lot of people don’t particularly have supporting families, and Pride Alliance gives them a good chance to reconnect with people and have a more positive friend group.” Spencer said.

Spencer believes that people need to be more supportive in general, not just in school settings. For his senior year, Spencer hopes for more meetings and activities outside of school.

“It’s helped me with being more positive and open with myself, because I used to be more conscious about stuff, ”Spencer said, “but now I don’t care because I know I have them to lean back on.”