Campus organizations join force to 'drop labels'

By Carolina Astrain

Published Jan. 23, 2007

The Gender Public Advocacy Coalition's Drop the Labels campaign is a two-week movement that seeks to educate students and professors about negative labels used in everyday conversation.

The Multicultural Center and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resource Center are locally sponsoring the movement, which started Jan. 15 and will last until Jan. 31.

"Even words like 'sissy' and others that come to mind should be considered as you start the semester and talking to friends in and out of classrooms," Multicultural Center graduate programming assistant Monique Mendoza said.

There is no specific location for Drop the Labels. Mendoza said it is more of an experience to spread throughout the campus via fliers, word-of-mouth and organization outreach.

The word "label" has many definitions including a slip — as of paper or cloth — inscribed and affixed to something for identification or description, a written or printed matter accompanying an article to furnish identification or other information or a descriptive or identifying word or phrase.

Mendoza said labels include some words that are not often thought of, such as "sweetheart," "punk" and "freak."

Mendoza said people are "thinking of ways of how the use of these words can have a negative effect on people."

According to the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition's Web site, the organization created Drop the Labels with the intent to create safer communities and schools through education of "gender-based bullying and the role stereotyping plays in that."

"This campaign is aimed to challenge how we use labels and how they target different groups," Mendoza said.