Living in society without having the rights to protect you is almost unimaginable. The Human Rights club of Sandpoint High School works hard to protect these rights, ever since the club rebooted and began meeting again just this year. 

Goldie Rader, president of the Human Rights club, shows consistent dedication and passion for the club by bringing in guest speakers to meetings, new ideas and activities for the members to participate in, and making the club feel like a welcomed place for everyone in the room. 

The club alternates their discussions every week, focusing first on the main topic of human rights, and secondly on the club’s focus for this year, the LGBTQ+ community.

Although the club is quite popular now, with the art room almost full during the meetings, it wasn’t always this way. Rader started the club up again this year after a two year drought during the years where their advisor, Zabrielle Dillon, was abroad. Rader is following in the footsteps of the founder of the club, Erik Bruhjell.

Bruhjell came to Dillon with the idea of creating the Human Rights club six years ago. Soon the idea became a reality, and the club was up and running. One of Bruhjells’ biggest projects was creating the Peace Pole, which is a pole with different languages featured on it that symbolizes peace and unity for all people. Bruhjell went on to graduate from Sandpoint High School, but sadly passed away in a car accident in the summer of 2018. 

The Human Rights club members have now chosen to honor Bruhjell’s memory by moving the Peace Poll to outside of the high school for people to see better and appreciate it more. Along with this, the club is planning to do other events: such as planting trees on Earth Day, taking part in a Pride march, and painting the bathroom stalls. This year they are also working with Kinderhaven, Bluehaven, and the Bonner County Human Rights Task Force.

If you want to join the Human Rights club, meetings are held after school on Tuesdays in the art room.