As part of our first gender-neutral homecoming, Story Dornsife, Cecilia McBride, Peter Lane, and Rayce Arrington were crowned Senior Royalty.

Past traditions did not allow for all sexualities and genders to be welcome in what some students considered an outdated homecoming tradition. Through consulting with Principal Amy Taylor, the senior nominees came to a decision to allow four seniors instead of two, to be named Senior Royalty to ensure every student felt comfortable and rightfully celebrated during the homecoming festivities.

“It isn’t a good representation for the LGBTQ community, and it surprises me that we still have to fight for this. I understand it might be unfair towards guys and not having someone represent their gender in all cases, but if a couple runs together and gets nominated, I think they should have a chance of winning together regardless of their gender,” junior Kelsey Stromberg said.

The homecoming court decided crowning four people would make it equal for all, including people that don’t identify with any gender or aren’t part of a couple. In the nomination process, however, many people on the homecoming court promoted themselves as couples rather than individually.

“The nomination process was not about couples,” Taylor said. “The process was for each student to nominate two ‘persons.’ Several senior couples/pairs decided on their own to campaign for themselves as couples using social media. Because students who are not in a couple or who did not campaign could potentially be at a disadvantage, we decided to move to a gender-neutral royalty court that was more inclusive of all, regardless of relationship status.“

The court and Taylor decided that one vote would be given per senior to help alleviate the couple bias, although couples continued to promote on their own behalf.

“I wanted a chance, which is better than nothing at all, to win with my girlfriend. If we could run together, I saw no reason for us to not be able to win together either,” Dornsife said. “It’s a complete switch to what homecoming tradition is about and hopefully, future students will work to improve it just as we did.”

Lane also supports the changes made this year and feels it was a move in the right direction.

“I felt really honored to get elected by my peers. I’ve never really cared about the king and queen tradition, so the more the merrier,” Lane said. “The policy change will allow Austin High to be more inclusive moving forward. It was the right change, and it reflects the opinions of the student body as a whole.”