Andrew Barnett, acting director of SMYAL, said the suicide-related findings of a new survey of local gay high school students were the most disturbing of the results. (Photo courtesy of Andrew Barnett)
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LOU CHIBBARO JR
Friday, April 04, 2008
D.C. high school students who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual are four times as likely to contemplate suicide than their heterosexual counterparts and regularly report being bullied and harassed by their classmates, according to a survey released last week by the District’s public school system.
The Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which is part of a national school-based survey funded by the federal government, also found that 23.3 percent of gay high school students in D.C. reported having used methamphetamine, or crystal meth, compared to just 2.5 percent of straight students.
Andrew Barnett, acting executive director of the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League (SMYAL), a D.C. group that advocates for gay youth, said the survey findings confirm what SMYAL has learned anecdotally from the youth who participate in its programs — that anti-gay harassment is a common occurrence in the city’s high schools.
“I urge school administrators to take action to make their schools a safer place for LGBTQ students by fostering acceptance for all students and ensuring bullying and harassment is never tolerated,” Barnett said.
“The local LGBTQ youth who attend programs in SMYAL’s youth center regularly report being harassed, bullied and abused by their classmates, leading some of them to skip class or drop out entirely,” he said.
Last year, D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee said she would soon revise the school system’s health education curricula to include lessons beginning in the eighth grade that teach respect for gay people and same-sex relationships. The gay-oriented lessons were part of a new set of health education standards addressing issues such as HIV prevention as well as discrimination that the city’s Board of Education approved last fall.
The Youth Risk Behavior Survey released last week did not collect information about transgender students.
Also among the report’s findings:
- 24.8 percent of Washington gay high school students reported using ecstasy one or more times compared to 3.9 percent of straight students.
- 39.1 percent reported using marijuana three or more times compared to 17 percent of straight students.
- 30.6 percent reported being bullied at least once on school property in the previous year compared to 16 percent of straight students.
- 30.6 percent of gay teens considered suicide in the previous year, 28.9 percent made a plan to commit suicide and 32.6 percent attempted suicide. That compares to 13.8 percent, 12.1 percent and 8.6 percent respectively in those same categories for their straight counterparts.
- 40.3 percent answered yes to the question, “During the past 12 months, did you ever feel so sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more in a row that you stopped doing some usual activities?” Just 25.7 percent of straight students said yes.
Barnett said SMYAL has found through its interviews and discussion with gay youth that harassment and bullying in the schools often causes separate problems for students.
“Getting that harassment and intimidation in their schools makes them less likely to achieve in school,” he said. “They don’t want to be there as much. Sometimes they will skip classes and even drop out.”
But even if they don’t drop out, Barnet said, “having to worry about that in the back of their minds at all times makes them less able to focus on their studies or to participate in extra curricular activities.”
He said SMYAL has called on school officials to arrange for more teachers and school administrators to participate in SMYAL’s Safer Schools program, which includes workshops and training sessions aimed at educating teachers and administrators about gay youth.
The program also encourages school officials to enforce existing school policies prohibiting harassment, including anti-gay and anti-trans harassment.
“The D.C. public school system has a real great policy on paper that protects students from harassment based on their sexual orientation,” Barnett said. “Unfortunately, a lot of teachers and a lot of students don’t know the policy exists and aren’t enforcing it.”
SMYAL is also continuing its longstanding effort to encourage students to form gay-straight alliances in both D.C. and suburban high schools, Barnett said.
He said Chancellor Rhee responded to concerns raised by SMYAL about problems in forming a gay-straight alliance at D.C.’s Anacostia Senior High School by assigning someone from her staff to go to the school to work with SMYAL and a gay male student to form a GSA group.
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