An update as of February 11th:
On Friday, the day after we posted the petition, one student was called into the office by the Dean of Faculties and Supervision and asked to set up a meeting for later that day. When the five of us arrived, the Dean made the student that had been called in earlier chose one other student to go in with them, in front of the rest of us due to the "lack of seats". The two students who were allowed in sat with double the amount of administrators and were told that they misunderstood and that they were wrong for 60 minutes, which cut into our academic day. They used intimidation and guilt tactics. Later on Friday afternoon, OCSA sent out an email to all parents and students saying that "...all parties agreed that the majority of the concerns resulted from miscommunication regarding the intent and content of the event." No parties agreed to this, it was a distortion of the situation and our words. The email was misconstrued as an apology. Since then, many people have expressed their support or disapproval of us and our petition.
We want to make it clear that the intention of this petition was never to insult or call out any students participating in the OCSA Gala, such as Montage! or any of the crew working in the show. We don't want to see Gala fail or loose funding, we want the issues and insensitivity of the theme to be addressed, acknowledged and apologized for.
Thank you so much for your support!
If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to email us directly at letsgetlearned@gmail.com