Gay High Schools Offer a Haven From Bullies
But the schools in Milwaukee and New York also reawaken the debate over school segregation
Corrected on 1/7/09: An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported the year that Alliance school opened. The school opened its doors in 2005.
The San Francisco Unified School District is one among a few districts that have made significant efforts to ensure the safety of all students. The School Support Services for LGBTQ Youth (LGBTQ is used commonly within the gay community as an abbreviation for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or questioning) is a program within the district's Health Services Department responsible for providing mental and physical health services to gay students and education about the effects of harassment to everyone else learning or working in the district. Created in 1990, it's the only program of its kind whose services are completely integrated within the district, says Kevin Gogin, the program's director, although he knows of similar programs that exist in Los Angeles and Saint Paul, Minn.
San Francisco's program has an LGBTQ liaison in place at every school who handles individual student concerns. On a larger scale, the program helps manage clubs at the high school, middle school, and elementary school levels designed to promote students' acceptance of one another. Though the program is not perfect, Gogin says that it is working and that school climate surveys indicate gay students feel safer in San Francisco public schools today than they did when the program was created in 1990. Keeping gay and straight students together gives them an opportunity to learn from one another, Gogin says.
With a slightly different take on what those educational opportunities look like, Owen agrees. Since Alliance opened, Owen has made a concerted effort to provide educational programming for other Milwaukee public schools about the ramifications of bullying by having Alliance students speak publicly about their harassment. Many of the students, teachers, and parents Owen meets at these speaking engagements say they had never met a gay person before and did not understand how damaging bullying could be. "But when they hear the students' stories, they get it," Owen says.
At one program with an audience of mostly parents on a middle school back-to-school night, Owen asked the parents to reflect on bullies from their childhood and draw pictures of those individuals. "Every adult in the room drew a detailed picture and had a vivid story to tell of that person who made them hate coming to school every day. We were all just about in tears listening to these stories," Owen says. "Bullying is not something we can take lightly. Just look at those adults. Those painful memories have stayed with them their entire lives, and I don't want that for today's students."
Reader Comments
Embelishments are one thing, this is just a little over the top
I am currently a student at Riverside High school, and I was there when Tara Motto went there. She had been a friend of mine while she was there and she did not openly identify as a lesbian. She was in a heterosexual relationship at the time and only identified as bizexual. I have been at Riverside High School for four years now and have identified as a lesbian all four years and have had no trouble. Although some students are not the most supportive of the homosexual students, the staff at Riverside is exceptionally supportive. There are homosexual teachers here and most of the staff are allies. I have nothing against the Alliance School, and my point was not to call out Tara, but Riverside is not unfriendly to gays. And don't get me wrong, I won't say the place is amazing but its not some homophobic shi*t-hole like its made out to be. Riverside is a large school, not everyone is going to like you, which is why you make an effort to find people who will. Riverside doesn't make it very hard, GSA meets every Thursday after school, Gay Club meets Fridays, obviously not everyone in the school is going to be an ally or even tolerant of gays because we all come from different backgrounds. Perhaps the students wouldn't have been so "mean" to Tara if she had been a bit more tolerant of African-Americans. *Riverside High School has a primarily African-American student population*
A consideration
There are a lot of arguments about integration and segregation here, but there are many differences between bullied students and students of color, though they are, as often as other students, one and the same. Bullied students often go "unseen" in a regular school environment, and integration rarely changes the way they are treated. They don't get the opportunity to change the dynamics of the school environment. By going to this school, and then doing presentations in other schools about bullying, the students actually become more visible and integrated and at the same time have the opportunity to develop coping skills and social skills which will help them later in life, while at the same time reducing violence in all schools.
For some reason this "separate the gays" thing sounds dangerously similar to apartheid's "separate but equal" policy that inevitably was contrary to beliefs in equality. Though admittedly this is much less onerous than apartheid, separation only lessens toleration in the long run. If black people had separate schools just because white elitists were bullying them 40 years ago, true that there would not have been as much bullying, but also true that today racism probably would still exist, and co-existence would not be as tolerated. Sometimes for toleration to come about, an "IN YOUR FACE" attitude is needed.
This hiding from the bullies attitude is ridiculous and only a factor that will only generate intolerance. Tell the gays of today's generation to take the punches for tomorrow's generation.
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