February 23rd, 2016

What is Pink Shirt Day?

In 2007, two high school students from the small community of Cambridge in Nova Scotia witnessed a grade 9 boy being bullied for wearing a pink polo shirt on his first day of school.  Bullies harassed the boy, called him a homosexual for wearing pink and threatened to beat him up.  Disgusted with this treatment, the students went to a nearby discount store and bought 50 pink shirts, including tank tops, to wear to school the next day.  Then the two went online to e-mail classmates to get them on board with their anti-bullying cause that they dubbed a “sea of pink”.  The next day not only were dozens of students outfitted with the discount tees, but hundreds of students showed up wearing their own pink clothes, some head-to-toe.  It was this story that inspired the movement “Pink Shirt Day”, a day where students are encouraged to wear something pink on the last Wednesday of February to symbolize that we as a society will not tolerate bullying anywhere.