(Photo: WIkimedia/Diego Grez)
Following the tragic deaths of Justin Aaberg, Tyler Clementi, Asher Brown, and Billy Lucas, much of the United States has been transfixed by the menace of anti-LGBT bullying. However one Minnesota anti-bullying expert tells TheColu.mn that the anti-LGBT bullying behind these high-profile suicides will continue until states pass anti-bullying legislation that forces administrators to address this kind of bullying in their schools.
“The problem is that you have to bring so much evidence to the table in order for [allegations of bullying] to be taken seriously,” Jessi Tebben told TheColu.mn in an interview last month, because educators and administrators can’t always see that anti-LGBT bullying is going on.
So-called comprehensive anti-bullying laws, which also lists a student’s sexual orientation and gender identity along with their religion, gender, and race as things for which they cannot be bullied, end that debate.
“Then you can focus in on prevention training,” Tebben said.
A bill like this was passed by bipartisan majorities in the 2009 session of the Minnesota legislature, but was vetoed by Governor Tim Pawlenty. Its chief supporter in the state Senate, Scott Dibble (DFL-Minneapolis) says he will propose it again for the 2011 session.
Money And Statistics, Key Ingredients
Tebben pointed to Washington State and Massachusetts as states that had strong anti-bullying policies passed by the state legislature. As school safety advocates in each state explain, though, the cost of training that helps put these laws into practice can be a significant stumbling block to achieving safe schools. Most of all, though, the advocates praised both state’s student healthy behavior surveys as critical tools in identifying schools and school districts that have significant anti-bullying problems.
“Data from individual locations is very motivating,” Beth Reis told TheColu.mn. Reis is the Chair of Washington’s Safe Schools Coalition, which recently led efforts to pass Washington State’s strict anti-bullying laws.
Washington’s Healthy Youth Survey, conducted every other year, asks eighth-, tenth-, and twelfth-grade students a number of questions about their use of drugs and alcohol, their sexual activity, exercise, and also how often they’re bullied based on their peer’s perception of their sexual orientation.
“It’s hard to dismiss,” Reis said. “It makes a big difference in teachers’ motivation [in tackling the problem]…It also helps mobilize the community to tackle the bullying problem.”
Pam Garramone, Executive Director of the Greater Boston chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), agrees. In Massachusetts, Garramone said, the state’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey has “definitely helped a lot.”
“It shows statistical disparities between schools and school districts, it can show improvements and declines in individual schools,” Garramone said, “and we can go to schools and say ‘you need to have training’”
“Teachers are horrified by the statistics,” she told TheClolu.mn, if they didn’t already know that here was anti-LGBT bullying going on in their school.
Like Washington’s anti-bullying laws, Massachusetts’ recently-passed anti-bullying laws require schools to train their staff in bullying prevention, but does not provide funding for teachers to pay consultants like Garramone to train their staff every year. Garramone says this is not a major problem for her and other staff members at Greater Boston PFLAG.
“PFLAG asks for honorarium of $350,” Garramone says, “but we waive that if the school doesn’t have the ability to pay [due to budget cuts]…Usually, though, schools find the money if they’re committed to addressing bullying.”
Reis, in Washington state, sees a much more pessimistic scene.
“Most districts adopt the state model” which prohibits bullying on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation, Reis said, “but that doesn’t mean that they necessarily enforce those policies and procedures in any effective, timely, or equitable way.”
Washington schools, Reis said, need training that doesn’t not just inform staff about the problem, but teaches them how to intervene, and trains principals in how to investigate a case of bullying. The biggest need, Reis said, is for training teachers, bus drivers, school nurses, and administrators s in primary prevention and how to address prejudice in the first place.
With schools in Washington facing budget crises similar to those before Minnesota schools, she said, it’s been impossible to give schools the funding they need to train their staff. Without that training, she says, “I will be surprised if the rates of bullying change much.”
Minnesota Coming Up Short?
Minnesota already has a student health behavior survey, called the Minnesota Student Survey. It is given every three years, according to the Minnesota Department of Education’s website, and asks participating sixth-, ninth-, and twelfth-graders about topics like sexual activity, drug use, bullying, and mental health. However, it does not ask questions about anti-LGBT bullying.
This, says Tebben, makes it hard to convince administrators that they have an anti-LGBT bullying problem until a crisis like the Anoka-Hennepin suicides makes it impossible to ignore.
MDE spokesperson Christine DuFour said that the department was applying for a federal grant from the federal Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Supportive Schools, “to significantly change the format, questions, administration and grade levels of the student survey. The purpose is to assess school environment/climate including bullying.
“While at this time, there has not been a question about a student self identifying their sexual orientation,” Dufour told TheColu.mn in an email, “it has been discussed in relation to bullying.”
Dufour said it was technically difficult to add questions to the survey.
“Adding questions to a survey is not merely a matter of cost but also of capacity,” she wrote. “Many people want questions added and it becomes too big to administer. If a question is added, another needs to be deleted. The questions must be chosen from validated/tested national instruments. Those decisions would be finalized if the Department is awarded the grant.”
Neither MDE nor the federal Department of Education would return emails and phone calls asking for more information about the grant or the application process.
It may be that a mandate from the state will prove necessary to keep more student suicides from happening; despite the positive rhetoric from LGBTA activists in the Anoka-Hennepin schools, the school district seems to be digging in its heels. In an interview with the Star-Tribune last week, the Chair of the Anoka-Hennepin School Board stated openly what many in the LGBT community have begun to suspect as an anti-LGBT bullying scandal unfolds in the heart of Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann’s district.
“We picked a position that we’re not going to deal with it,” Tom Heidemann said of the district’s so-called “neutrality policy,” which LGBTA advocates say contributes to a strongly anti-LGBT environment in the schools and to the suicides of several LGBT students last year.
“These are issues that can be dealt with outside the classroom,” he said.
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