"Hey, ACLU, I'm a gay ninth-grader. My teachers don't treat me differently because of my gender expression. I have both gay and straight friends. I get to live my life without being discriminated against. I've never been bullied. And I feel safe at school every day."
We've never gotten that call here at the ACLU of Southern California (ACLU/SC) LGBTQ Student Rights Project. More often, we get calls about incidences of school bullying that no one should have to endure. We hear from students who face judgmental teachers, unsympathetic principals, and ineffective superintendents, while being harassed by their peers on a daily basis. We work toward a future that promises that all students, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth, feel safe expressing themselves.
But trying to address all the calls we get about anti-LGBTQ bullying feels like treating the symptoms without addressing the illness. The real issue is this: How do we stop the calls from coming in?
The solution to the national bullying problem isn't being a bystander until something bad happens. Just like the world's best ambulance driver can't prevent a drunk driver from getting behind the wheel, the most experienced lawyer can't stop students from bullying their peers. We have to teach school officials how to address issues of unsafe school climates before harassment starts or escalates.
Our LGBTQ Student Rights Project works with schools to create safe school environments. We educate schools on LGBTQ student rights, about the preventative policies and procedures they should adopt to avoid finding themselves in a courtroom, and we connect them to the community.
The course's video lectures and interviews instruct teachers how to intervene in bullying situations and how to create teachable moments. Most important, it teaches the steps educators can take to preventing bullying and harassment before it starts.
These programs make a difference in students' lives, but they depend on school cooperation to make these changes. How do we get schools to take a stance against bullying?
It starts with you: parents and their children need to become the anti- bullying champions of their own school experiences. All across California, students have the right to feel safe in their schools, and their parents have the right to demand it. Families in our community must knock on their principals' and superintendents' doors with these tools in hand and tell them that we aren't going to wait to end bullying until after another tragedy occurs.
