Anti-bullying video by Vancouver students has parent group upset over Lady Gaga song
February 29, 2012
Jennifer Pagliaro
STAFF REPORTER
A school project in Vancouver to promote anti-bullying has one parents’ group riled up after students made a YouTube video featuring Lady GaGa’s “Born This Way.”
A group of 1,500 elementary and high school students from 11 schools in Vancouver and one in New York, released a choreographed dance video to the pop star’s song ahead the 5th Annual Anti-Bullying Day or Pink Shirt Day – celebrated on Feb. 29 this year.
But the Burnaby Parents’ Voice, an independent parents’ group formed in response to a Burnaby school district anti-homophobia policy, wrote to Premier Christy Clark and education minister George Abbott in protest.
“Will this project reduce bullying? Not likely,” Gordon World, Burnaby Parents' Voice member, told Burnaby Now. “They claim this sends a positive social message of acceptance of self and others. Not for overweight kids, anorexic kids or those who don't dance well. Not those who resist their school's promotion of Lady Gaga's sex sells worldview.”
The group also raised concerns over the sexual content of Gaga’s video for the song and lyrics they say “contain numerous slogans declaring Lady Gaga's worldview, which are offensive to most religions as well as atheism.”
But MacCorkindale Elementary School principal Darren Mitzel, one of the projects co-creators, said the message of the project was accepting everyone for who they are, regardless of gender, race, religion or disability.
“It’s important that we need to teach this kind of being able to accept people for who they are no matter what in schools and also as adults in life,” Mitzel said.
As for the criticism from Parents’ Voice, Mitzel said: “Everyone has a right to their own opinion and we respect that.”
Parents were informed about the project and intention to use Gaga’s song and students could opt out of appearing in the video, which some did, Mitzel said.
Mitzel added students were never shown Gaga’s version of the video, but the lyrics represent the message of acceptance they were going for.
“We need something hip to get kids engaged,” he said of the song choice.
In the project video, which has close to 3,000 views on YouTube, groups of students from each school were filmed as they performed a choreographed dance in various outdoor locations, which were then edited together.
Last year, Mitzel said two schools participated in a flash mob to Bruno Mars’s “Just the Way You Are,” warranting positive feedback from across the globe.
He said the goal was to expand the success of that project to more schools this year.
And while the use of her song may have some parents upset, Lady Gaga is launching her own anti-bullying foundation today with help of 17-year-old Etobicoke student Jacques St. Pierre.
Gaga surprised Pierre last year by sending him an encouraging video response after he contacted her. The message was played at an anti-bullying rally at his school.
Pierre will join Gaga and Oprah Winfrey at Harvard University today for the launch of the Born This Way Foundation.
B.C.’s Richmond school district also made a separate video for Pink Shirt Day, performing and filming a flash mob of more than 500 students at the Aberdeen Centre Mall earlier this week. That video has already been watched more than 22,000 times on YouTube.
That video uses David Guetta’s “Without You.”
Pink Shirt Day was inspired by two Grade 12 students in Nova Scotia who arranged for classmates to wear pink tank tops to school after a Grade 9 boy was bullied for wearing a pink polo in 2007.
An Angus Reid Public Opinion poll released Wednesday showed 65 per cent of respondents think bullying should be considered a crime, even if no physical violence is involved.