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Weber joins the It Gets Better Project

Stephen Colbert, President Barack Obama, Jane Lynch and over 30,000 others have made videos for the It Gets Better Project, talking to people who are being bullied in schools, particularly LGBT youth. Weber State University is also joining in the project.

The It Gets Better Project is to show support for the bullied LGBT youth and to help them get through their school years. These videos show kids that life does get better after they get out of school and away from the bullies. The project was in response to the number of LGBT teen suicides that have been occurring over the past few years.

The idea for WSU to get involved first started when Michael Vazquez, the residence hall senator, came across the website itgetsbetter.org and showed President Obama’s video to the other senators in student senate. Students have told senators that there have been problems with bullying at WSU.

“There’s been a lot of talk this year, the issue has been brought up to us quite a bit,” said Kelsey Spaulding, the applied science and technology senator. “It’s our duty and responsibility to represent the students and to make sure that things work and function in the university as they should between students.”

During Deliberative Democracy Day on Feb. 22, there will be an opportunity for students to participate in WSU’s It Gets Better video, saying what they want to the students being bullied. The topic for this year’s Deliberative Democracy Day is same sex marriage.

“The venue as well as the project coincides perfectly,” said Nick Nava, the senator for veterans. “Just the opportunity to not only get the idea but the full message out to the student body is very important and to make them realize it’s an important issue that needs to be addressed and people need to be aware of it.”

All students will have the opportunity to participate in the video, whether attending Deliberative Democracy Day or not. Faculty and staff are also welcome to join.

“Any sort of uplifting word can help someone,” said student Maggie Sherwood. Sherwood said that she thinks the WSU It Gets Better Project is a good idea, “if they think it can help, then yes.”

Mandie Barnes, the arts and humanities senator, said campus-wide respect is one of the senate’s major goals.

“I think we can all agree that it’s not okay to bully or discriminate,” Barnes said. “I think that is our main goal, to bring the whole university together and to have respect for each other.”

The senators mentioned that this video can be for anyone being bullied. “It’s for anybody, whether they are of a different ethnicity or a different background or even between majors, sometimes there’s that rivalry of saying, ‘Oh, it’s a fluff major,’” Spaulding said. “You just need to turn to the person and say, ‘I respect you for what you have; I respect you for who you are, where you come from, what you do.’”

The video, once it is finished, will be uploaded onto itgetsbetter.org. Barnes, Spaulding and Nava said they also plan to put it on YouTube, the marquee in the Shepherd Union Building and the senate website.

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