By Anna Boratyn
Executive Opinion Editor|
1. Senior Meredith Kee’s two major extracurriculars are Prospect Marching Knights and Gay Straight Alliance (GSA).  Kee is involved in PMK, where she plays an instrument called the marimba.   Kee enjoys participating in PMK because of PMK’s supportive community, and because it has helped her grow as a person.
2. Kee’s other major extracurricular is the GSA. Kee is the president of Prospect’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) because she believes that being gay does not make a person inferior, and that gay people deserve all the same rights as straight people.
“I want to give students the support they need,” Kee said
3. Kee’s freshman year,the GSA was called “Prism Club” and it met twice a year.  During Kee’s sophomore year, the name was changed to Gay-Straight Alliance, and had a total membership  of four people. Then, Kee and her friends, seniors Chloe Chidester, Franco Longobardi, Patrick Pfohl became joined and promoted and advertised for the GSA.  The organization now has around 30 students.
“We didn’t really start it, but we made it what it is,” Kee said.
4. Kee first got the idea to start a GSA in 8th grade, when her friend senior Ted Marzolf came out as gay.
She supported him as he came out to other friends and to his family.
“I really saw what a struggle it was, and I didn’t want people to go without any support,” Kee said.
So Kee decided to create a place where gay people could go to get support and straight people could learn about what they were going through.
“People can make (being gay) a problem for someone.  And that ‘s not okay,” Kee said.
5.  Kee has been to several European countries.  Her dad is from Ireland, and Kee has traveled there in addition to England, France, Spain, Canada and the
Netherlands.
6. Kee is taking a gap year instead of going straight to college next year.  She plans to ride her bike across the country and hike the Appalachian Trail.
“I want to take time to explore myself, while I have opportunity,” Kee said.
7. One of the other reasons Kee plans to take a gap year is her curiosity about America.
“There are so many cool cultures and ecosystems within our borders that I’ve never experienced,” Kee said. “I want to find out what’s there.”
8.  Kee plans to major in environmental studies, a topic she feels passionately about.  “I want to be someone who stands for the environment.  I want to be someone who gives the environment a voice that it doesn’t have.”
9. Kee’s top choice college is College of the Atlantic because it’s has the nation’s second-best environmental studies program.
“The more I learn about (College of the Atlantic), the more it seems like its personality and my personality are the same,” Kee said.
10. The best advice Kee has ever comes from her mother.
“The only things I ever regret are the things that I didn’t do.”