Advocates say educators too reluctant to tackle bullying of gays, lesbians Sunday, February 20, 2005 By Mackenzie Carpenter, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Last month, 5,500 educators from 36 states signed up as participants in the second annual No Name Calling Week, an anti-bullying program addressing verbal harassment of students, including gay and lesbian students, in middle and high schools. Lake Fong, Post-Gazette Angela Noel said she suffered from verbal and physical harassment from classmates as an openly gay student at Penn Hills High School. When she and her girlfriend went to school officials for help, Noel said, "they told me the attention was our fault, that we were flaunting our sexuality, we needed to tone it down, and there was nothing they could do." In Pittsburgh, Mayor Tom Murphy's office chimed in, too, with a proclamation declaring Jan. 24-28 No Name Calling Week in Pittsburgh's schools. There was only one problem: Pittsburgh Public Schools never held the program. City school administrators told organizers in early January that individual schools could sponsor No Name Calling Week, which featured essay contests with cash prizes, an extensive curriculum, public speakers and other activities, but that there wasn't enough time to get approval by the Pittsburgh Board of Education to mandate it districtwide. Two weeks later, however, the school district reversed its position. In an e-mail Jan. 17, Westlynn Davis, the director of student services, barred schools from implementing the program, because, she said, it wasn't "board approved." Davis didn't return phone calls for comment. But privately, Pittsburgh school officials say there was discomfort at being affiliated with the event's organizer, the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, a national grass-roots organization that works to make schools safe for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students. "They were afraid of the 'G' word and the 'L' word," said one top-ranking official, who asked not to be named. The Pittsburgh school district isn't the only one in the area that decided to pass on No Name Calling Week. Of 266 middle and high schools contacted by the organizers, mostly in Allegheny County, two -- Brentwood Middle School and River Valley School, a private school -- participated, although the Brentwood school didn't use the part of the curriculum dealing with gays and lesbians. "My teachers didn't think it was appropriate," said Principal Lawrence Kushner, who noted that his school already had an extensive anti-bullying program covering all students. "They think it's more for the parents to discuss at home with their children," he said. Mindful of the corrosive effect bullying has on learning, not to mention legal liabilities, many districts have adopted strategies designed to address the problems of taunting in schoolyards and classrooms. But No Name Calling Week goes beyond the usual suspects of race and religion to include anti-gay and -lesbian harassment, a widespread problem frequently ignored by school officials, according to gay activists. Homosexuality is a volatile public issue these days, fueled in part by the current controversy over same-sex marriage, a debate that reaches into the highest levels of government: Last month, the U.S. secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, criticized a PBS children's program on diverse families because it included a lesbian couple. All across the country, educators are struggling with the question of how to address the needs, even the very existence, of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students. Most studies have found that about 5 percent of high school students identified themselves as gay or reported having had same-gender sexual experiences, according to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. Avoidance as policy Despite increasingly positive portrayals of gays in popular culture, young people are still finding that "coming out" can be a harrowing process. In 2002, the National Mental Health Association found that gay students are at "disproportionate risk" for bullying and harassment, reporting hearing anti-gay slurs about 26 times a day. Another 30 percent said they had been threatened or injured at school the year before, according to the association, and 78 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds reported having seen students tease or bully others who are gay or believed to be gay. In a survey last year of 900 students by the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, 66 percent reported using language such as "that's so gay" to describe something that is wrong, bad or stupid. Eighty-three percent of gay students noted that "faculty and staff never or only rarely intervene when they are present and homophobic remarks are made." Sometimes, school officials join in harassment and discrimination. In 2003, a California school district was ordered to institute sensitivity training and pay $45,000 in damages to a student barred from gym class because she was a lesbian. Closer to home, a case involving abuse of a gay student by his classmates and teachers in the Titusville School District in Crawford County was settled in 2002 for $312,000. Currently, a former student is suing the Southeast Greene School District in Greene County for failing to shield him from verbal and physical bullying by students and teachers. For the most part, though, the general approach by school boards and districts has been avoidance of gay-lesbian issues altogether, said Deborah Roffman, a human-sexuality educator and consultant based in Baltimore. "It's the fear of controversy or confrontation itself that often drives schools to avoid taking stands on the fair and equitable treatment of gay and lesbian students and their families," she said. "This anxiety also gets in the way of school personnel's ability to envision how a school community can deal with gay and lesbian issues effectively without making others in the community feel alienated." Much of the discomfort on the part of schools is about words: Should "gay" and "lesbian" appear in sex education curriculum or, for that matter, in fliers and leaflets advertising the next meeting of a school's Gay Straight Alliance (extracurricular clubs run by gay students that promote dialogue with the schools' straight population)? In fact, should Gay Straight Alliances be allowed to call themselves that, or, as some school officials insist, be called Diversity Clubs? Should anti-bullying programs that specifically discuss gay-bashing be implemented, or are generic anti-bullying programs enough? There's some strong disagreement on this last question. Linda Hodge, president of the National PTA, told the Associated Press she strongly supports classroom initiatives promoting tolerance and combating bullying but suggested some programs could backfire if they focus so explicitly on harassment of gays that those students feel singled out and labeled. Steven Glassman, chairman of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, who is openly gay, noted that gay students are already feeling targeted. "Schools can tout their bullying programs all they want," he said, "but unless the words gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered are included in the program, then gay and lesbian kids will not see themselves in the picture and will not feel protected." Subjected to abuse One such student was Angela Noel, now 19, who said she suffered for years from physical and verbal abuse by classmates at Penn Hills High School. "They'd follow me around the school, throw food at me in the cafeteria, call me a 'dyke.' " At one point, she says, she was cornered in a hallway and nearly pushed over a staircase railing. Siblings of gay students aren't immune, either. A Pittsburgh middle school student says she was greeted in the hallways of her school with jeers because her older brother was gay. "They'd say, 'You're the fag's little sister.' " Rachel Kendall, a senior at Mt. Lebanon High School, still bears painful memories of being taunted in middle school in another district. "For me, it started in sixth grade and seventh grade at Chartiers Valley, when I got pushed in the hallways, called a 'dyke.' People threw books and spitballs at me." When Noel and her girlfriend went to school officials for help, "they told me the attention was our fault, that we were flaunting our sexuality, we needed to tone it down, and there was nothing they could do." Over the next two years, the bullying escalated, until finally Noel's mother came to the school and demanded to know what school officials were going to do about the problem, "and the officials told my mom they were going to handle it. And after that, the other kids left me alone." Penn Hills school officials declined to comment on Noel's case, citing confidentiality policies, but school spokesman Matthew Cummings noted that current Superintendent Patricia Gennari has been in that position only since 2004, a year after Noel graduated. In a statement, Cummings said the district's policies "strictly prohibit verbal, written, graphic or physical conduct relating to an individual's race, color, national origin/ethnicity, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation or religion." "This school district does not take complaints of bullying or harassment lightly. This type of behavior, in any form, is not tolerated in Penn Hills," Cummings said. Kendall said Chartiers Valley officials also were unhelpful, although a spokesman for the school said no complaints from her were on record. And, in fact, Adrian Predmore, a Chartiers Valley senior, said the school's approach has improved greatly in recent years, with officials responding quickly when presented with complaints. Overall, it's a better environment than a few years ago, she added, when one gay student even dropped out of school after some students put up a Web site mocking his sexuality. Most states, including Pennsylvania, have no laws, policies or resources protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students. While bills have been introduced in the state Senate and House that would prohibit discrimination because of "sexual orientation or gender identity or expression" in educational opportunities, they haven't gone anywhere, Glassman said. Locally, though, Pittsburgh and nine other school districts have anti-discrimination policies that include homosexuals. Still, "there isn't a real strong district initiative dealing with gays," said Stan Denton, director of the district's multicultural programs. "We focus mainly on race, gender and national origin issues, but when it comes to sexual orientation, we're pretty silent about that. "One gay student told me once that if he got beat up or told the principal he got called the "F" word, the principal would just say, 'Try to be more careful.' But if [an African-American] kid's called the "N" word, the principal launches a full-scale investigation." The 'values' factor In the end, do programs such as No Name Calling Week make any difference? Its organizers say yes. A survey of last year's participants found a statistically significant drop -- 18 percent -- in taunting and name-calling by students who participated. The essay contest received 1,600 entries across the country, "so many that we had to create an honorable mention category," said Kevin Jennings, national director of the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, Still, the program's emphasis on gay and lesbian bullying did prompt at least one local middle school to decline participation because of concerns about the age-appropriateness of the material, as well as the political climate. "We're not sure that sixth- and seventh-graders are ready for it," said Christy Clapper, a guidance counselor at the Quaker Valley School District. While any child overheard making derogatory anti-gay comments is disciplined, there is no discussion about sexual preferences or orientation because "at that age, they understand things like name-calling, but they don't understand what gay or lesbian means. We teach them not to use that language without teaching them the ramifications of it. "Plus, we have a very conservative climate right now, both politically and educationally. And it would be wrong to assume that all parents would want us to teach about sexual preferences or orientation." Brentwood Middle School's Kushner said students were allowed to raise issues of gay and lesbian bullying in the classroom. "We have had gay and lesbian students here, and we've stood up for them, treating them the same way we treat anyone else," he said. "We're not afraid to discuss the issue here, but to put it in the curriculum is a whole different ballgame." Warren Throckmorton, director of counseling at Grove City College, objects to the No Name Calling Week for assuming that bullies of gays and lesbians are homophobic. "There's no evidence that people who disagree with homosexuality on moral grounds are the perpetrators. Bullies do what they do for social reasons, not because they're anti-gay. They're finding the weak link in the chain and exploiting it, just as they might go after a tall kid who wears glasses or the fat kid, or the religiously conservative kid." "The organizers of No Name Calling Week confuse things, as if 'bad' beliefs cause bullying. I'm not saying we should look the other way when it's gay kids being bullied, but the answer is not to go in and try to change peoples' beliefs." But sooner or later, school districts will have to face the issue of where they stand on the "G" word and the "L" word, Roffman said. "Schools do not have the luxury of putting the issue on hold because it seems too scary, confusing or daunting," she said. There is a way to do this, she believes, "without alienating parents opposed to homosexuality." But Angela Noel thinks it's unlikely gay and lesbian students will have an easier time than she had. "In this climate, it's about fear," she said. "For school officials, it's hard to come out in the open and support gay and lesbian students. There's this fear if they do acknowledge it, and try to do something to protect these kids, people will say, 'Oh this school is promoting a homosexual lifestyle.' I think schools really are afraid of that. "It's not going to get better any time soon. I think it's going to get worse. People are becoming more intolerant since I was in high school, not less." (Mackenzie Carpenter can be reached at mcarpenter@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1949.)