Imagine a School Culture of Dignity and Respect for All
Yesterday I testified on behalf of GLAD in front of the General Court’s Joint Committee on Education in support of a comprehensive bill to prevent school bullying. The bill before the committee, H. 483, is an excellent starting point and has the potential to ultimately result in a law that would create safer schools for Massachusetts students, including those who are LGBT.
It hardly needs to be said that there is an epidemic of homophobia in our schools. Anti-gay comments are thrown around casually by students to mean anything from “stupid” to weird” to “detestable.” One study found that students hear anti-gay comments 25.5 times a day. This climate of insults, negativity, and entrenched homophobia fosters and enables more overt targeting of LGBT youth. LGBT students are considerably more likely to be harassed than other groups, which often escalates over time to violence.
GLAD recently assisted a transgender student, Tracy, who was involved in such a situation. When Tracy began the long process of transitioning from male to female at the beginning of ninth grade, she was harassed constantly. From the beginning, Tracy would walk into school in the morning to a stream of verbal harassment. But over a period of two years, the level of harassment escalated into violence. It started with having paper thrown at her every day from the moment she walked into school. Eventually the harassment escalated to an all-out assault, when after lunch one day students chucked a barrage of oranges at her. With no early intervention, a verbal bullying problem managed to escalate into a serious violent assault. Tracy ultimately had no choice but to transfer to a school 45 minutes away.
In addition to violence, LGBT students suffer shockingly high levels of sexual harassment. One story that came to GLAD shows how sexual orientation bullying could instigate an incident of sexual harassment. Katie, a lesbian, described an incident that occurred when she was in sixth grade in a Massachusetts school. After gym class, five eighth grade boys cornered here. They started shoving her, screaming “IT, IT!” and demanding she tell them if she was a boy or a girl. One boy grabbed her, threw her against the locker, and ripped her pants down. Leaving her naked on the floor, they walked away with one of the boys saying, “well, I guess we know now.” The boys were never punished.
H. 483 would require schools to develop comprehensive bullying policies to try to prevent bullying before it starts, and, if bullying does occur, deal with it effectively through a systematic process that is uniform throughout each district. Among other helpful measures, the bill would require parental notification of bullying incidents, annual reports on bullying to the state, reports to law enforcement when bullying rises to the level of criminal activity, and training for school employees in preventing and responding to bullying. It would also extend the school’s jurisdiction over bullying incidents to harassment that occurs over the internet. An amendment to the bill that GLAD supports would add a section enumerating common targets for bullying, including LGBT students.
The culture of bullying in schools is not going away on its own. No one who has spent any time as a teacher or student in our school system could credibly say otherwise. That is why yesterday we went to Beacon Hill to ask the Committee to take action. It is time for Massachusetts to lead the way once again in creating a better society. Together we can work towards changing school culture from an experience of “running the gauntlet” to one of mutual respect and dignity for all. Imagine that!
Boston Globe: Support Swells for Anti-Bullying Legislation