When people are being bullied, PUNISH THE BULLIES. Tell their parents. Give them detention. Suspend them.

Tell the kid’s parents the kid is being bullied – but why say what for? These school admins KNEW the kid wasn’t out b/c they had to cajole them. They KNOW being gay isn’t ok with a lot of people because gay marriage is not legal in most states and there’s politicians and famous people spewing shit about gay people every day.

I don’t feel that the school had good intentions, honestly. If they did, they were driven pretty strongly by some homophobic subconscious that essentially drove them to victim blaming.

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At this same junior high, one of my best friends got the shit beat out of him for being gay. His locker was vandalized, PE was a nightmare, etc.

The state of Utah needs a massive diversity training course, frankly.

Headdesk.

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There’s been a change in administration since then. Jesus, utah. It’s like the school doesn’t give a fuck, or hurts more than helps.

Headdesk.

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I hope the school learns from this mistake.

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It’s just so true and so clear, it bears repeating.

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There’s a lot we don’t know about this story. If a 14 year old makes a decision to come out in a class project, was appropriately checked in with and still insisted, he might very well have been able to agree for the school to tell his parents, even if he initially resisted — which I could understand. It’s possible that the school said, “Look, if you come out in school like that, chances are someone is going to tell your parents anyway” — which is true. If the school knew the parents and deduced that they would be supportive, it may have been a well-informed decision to try to convince the student to let his parents know. (I’m not sure he’s missing more than a week or two of school, but point taken.) Do we know for sure that the bullies were only spoken to once, and their parents not notified?

The request not to be in the room is an interesting one. It might’ve been a fearful, “I don’t want to be in the room when they find out”, or “I think you could do a better job telling them and explaining it.” We’re not sure.

But you bring up the most important issues, regardless of what we know or don’t know. It’s not an easy problem for schools to understand without help.

1) It’s a two-pronged problem: a) protect and *respect* the gay student, but those two things mean being smart about the particulars of the situation; b) address the bullies.

2) Ultimately, the tension between respecting the student’s right and thinking you’re protecting them/protecting the school must be resolved with the student’s decision–that should be final, and the student needs an advocate (an LGBT youth expert, specifically) if the school disagrees. The advocate would also be the expert regarding if the student has the maturity to make those decisions if it means not involving the parents.

3) Protocols regarding gay bullying need to be established, and I somewhat disagree with the tendency not to say anything unless a specific rule is broken. Depending on the school district, teachers and admins do that frequently–but establish the rule: no hate speech, and that includes racial, homophobic and disability slurs. I personally would like there to be discussions about how bullying is so often gay panic where the bully often does have suppressed homoerotic desires, without pointing the finger directly at the bully (tricky, I know, but you don’t want to out Karofsky-the-gay-bully, either, Finn-the-Blind-Administration.)

4) Protocols dealing with the various situations gay or seemingly gay students might be in. Immediately talking to the harassed student might not be the best thing, while *always* immediately talking to the bullies is. Steer the conversation away from the victim and towards the bully’s problem (because they always have one, and the school should be concerned about that).

The difficult part, I think, is respecting the student’s wishes and protecting them at the same time. It involves training, and so many school districts can barely afford teaching materials, that the threat of lawsuits might be the only thing convincing them it needs to be done.

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Here’s how that works [an idealized script, let's call it]: “Oh hi Ms. so and so… Yes, _________ did very well on that quiz last week. I have a few concerns though. So today I overheard ___________ making comments about _____. Well, actually s/he said, “_________________” (actual, direct quotes are useful, particularly when the language is harsh). S/he’s not big trouble, yet, but I did want you to know that s/he said those things, because you and I both know that s/he can do better than that. And we do not tolerate [whatever words were used] at [your school]. Yes well, s/he should be focusing on [whatever class you teach] and harassing other students is obviously not what you’ve taught him/her at home. I can tell because in [x situation where the kid is angelic, and there always is one] s/he always shows good [whatever]. mmhmm. So how do you think we can make sure that this stops so ________ can focus?”

However, calling someone’s mom and saying, “by the way, your kid is gay and people are teasing him” would never, EVER, have occurred to me. WTF.

Here’s a script for that one. “Hi Ms/Mr___________. [kid] is not in any trouble, I’m just concerned because some of the other students have been teasing him and he might be upset about it. He’s handling it maturely but I thought you’d like to know. No, of course he’s not in trouble. I’d just really like to make sure that he feels safe here, so if you ever feel like you need to speak with someone at school, or [kid] tells you about anything another student does, please let me or [useful administrator] know as soon as possible, because we will not be tolerating any bullying at _________school. Also, please tell [kid] that he should [plan for what to do when another kid bothers him that does not involve calling mom and staying home OR punching anyone in the face--generally it involves "find x helpful adult"] if it happens again.” That is also not rocket science.

And done. Teachers should be calling parents all the time, and not just for the nasty shit teenagers do to each other. Calling and saying things like, “Oh hi Mr. _________, nothing is wrong, I just want to tell you that ___________ did [x awesome thing] and I wanted to make sure you knew….” was my favorite part of teaching middle school.

I am not understanding how this was hard for the school here to figure out.

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Who knows? Maybe something like that would have started an important discussion, and made him more comfortable to come out to his parents.

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