Courtesy of
MCT

   Students are back in middle school, high school and college, and we all want them to succeed. But their chance of success depends, to a great degree, on having a sense of safety.

   Unfortunately, many students who don't fit society's preferred heterosexual models or gender stereotypes feel unsafe. That's not right. Schools have an obligation to ensure the safety of all their students, including their lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students.

   Ten states - California, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin - have laws that require administrators to ensure a safe environment for gay, lesbian and bisexual students. Only California, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota and New Jersey provide laws that protect transgender students (students who do not identify as the gender they were assigned at birth).

   In states with anti-discrimination laws on the books, school officials should enforce them and remind employees, as well as the student body, that there will be zero tolerance for harassment, intolerance or violence.

   In states without anti-discrimination laws against LGBT students, it is all the more important for school officials to adopt and enforce a clear policy against harassment, intolerance or violence.

   A hostile environment takes a toll. LGBT middle-school and high-school students were five times more likely to report having skipped because of safety concerns than the general population of students, according to the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network's 2005 National School Climate Survey.

   But the good news in the survey was that solutions are readily available.

   The presence of supportive staff contributed to a greater sense of safety. Students in schools with a gay-straight alliance were less likely to miss school, and more likely to feel like they belonged than students in schools with no such clubs.

   And having a comprehensive policy was related to a lower incidence of verbal harassment.

   One troubling fact, though, is that even at the college level, harassment persists.

   A recent survey from the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition found that 30 percent of LGBT students polled have been harassed or discriminated against on campus because they didn't fit expectations of masculinity or femininity, 13 percent have been harassed for using a restroom because they didn't fit expectations of masculinity or femininity and 25 percent have felt unsafe in campus housing.

   This survey found slightly more than half of the colleges and universities responding have policies protecting students based on gender identity or expression. The colleges and universities that don't have such policies need to get with the program.

   And only one-fifth of the country's largest school districts now include protections based on gender identity (the inner sense of being male or female) and expression (the outer appearance of gender).

   As administrators, teachers and students get used to being back in school, we encourage them to educate one another about existing laws and policies protecting LGBT students against harassment, and we urge them to advocate for filling policy gaps.

   "We need to move from tolerance to acceptance to celebration of each student," said Tom Vandervest, recently retired principal of Middleton High School in Wisconsin.

   At the very least, every student deserves to feel safe.