Homophobia and bullying is a prevalent social issue in schools all across New Zealand. It affects many areas of students' lives and has impacts on mental health, relationships, and schoolwork, and creates an unsafe school environment. We feel that both government and school policies could do more to prevent and prohibit homophobia and discrimination against LGBTQ+ students - which is something we would like to change.

Currently, many policies state, "we will NOT accept: Inappropriate, abusive, or obscene language; Bullying, mocking, lying or stealing." We would like to further define this to specifically include discrimination against LGBTQ+ students, and promote this policy to create productive conversation surrounding this issue.

With enough signatures, we can be among the few colleges in New Zealand which targets this issue and hopefully encourage other schools in the community to acknowledge and address this issue.