Alright, so from the title you might be wondering what a student suing a school has to do with them being gay. First, my rant-tastic back story to what the hell I'm talking about. I was looking through a newspaper for an article for Spanish class (we have to bring in and talk about current events in Spanish) and it is this Newspaper for the county I live in. Let me first say that I don't really like them (well, many people have a problem with them) because they can be biased and for some reason hates my town. (Said my town was racist for not wanting to integrate schools with another town, that happens to have a large Black population, when the real reason is we had barely enough room for our own students). Also, this newspaper has been known to twist words and stories a bit at times. Nevertheless, they have simple articles to translate, hence it's usefulness for my Spanish homework. So, I come across an article about this highschool student who people taunted and apparently beat up for being gay. After a period of time, the student (and his lawyer I would assume) sued the school for not taking any action over several years. I don't know what he was trying to gain in the case, as I don't recall it being said in the article. The court ruled in his favor, saying the school had to do more then wave their finger at someone after beating up another student. Also, they said the guidance counselor should not just tell the victim to turn their cheek. Another point was made, but it wasn't very clear if this was actually a ruling in court or a suggestion. It said that kids who deface synagogues (Jewish places of worship) have to read "The Diary of Anne Frank" and learn about her, as well as write some sort of paper on her (Anne Frank being a girl who, with her family, hid from the Nazi's in WWII and her diary about her experience was published and now a famous piece of literature). After mentioning this fact they said it would most likely be effective to send kids who taunted someone for being gay to Laramie Wyoming (state of the U.S. for those who don't know...), where (and I don't know the story that well, so excuse me if I say this inaccurately) a boy/young man (I honestly forget his age, but I want to say he was in his teens, again I'm not familiar with the story) was crucified for being gay about 7 years ago. There they would have to learn about the story, and probably write about it, or something related to it. (The article mentioned writing about courage, but I don't see the connection). Now I know I just put a lot of information out there, but I thought the article was interesting on many points. Now, I agree the school was wrong for not doing anything, but I'm not entirely sure if taking them to court was the way to address it. Also, the prospect of punishing kids by forcing them to learn about something they made fun of, most likely out of ignorance is an interesting idea to say the least. I just thought it would be interesting to hear the opinions of those who stuck with this post long enough to read my rant.
who knows what kind of situation the bullied kid was in, and what the school had done, but I do like the idea of making kids learn about what they are discriminationg against. In court, a very common outcome is a sentence of community service. Learning about a culture is kind of the same idea, except it is helping yourself. If a kid bullies another for belonging to a certain religion, then if you were to make them learn about the hardships people have to go through when they are discriminated against, they would probably be less likely to bully again. Giving a fine or a jail sentence usually only makes hatred. I wouldn't take that Washington thing all the way to making the person travel there, but i would definately make the person read about the stuggles that each and every gay person goes through.
That was Matthew Shepard and I believe he was 21 when he was beaten and left for dead. And he did die from his injuries shortly afterwards. It was in 1998. http://www.matthewshepard.org/ In terms of whether taking them to court was the right way to address, sadly in Western society there's not much else that can be done to impress upon schools and school boards that they need to care about the well-being of ALL their students. I think it's pretty brilliant to have to have people guilty of harrassing others to learn more about them and their culture/lives. A lot, if not all, of that kind of behaviour stems, I believe, from a kind of dehumanising thing people do to groups of people they are ignorant of, and education generally helps reduce ignorance. I guess you can argue the merits of enforced education but if it were done with savvy I'm betting it could work.
i like the idea of educational punishment. if only it would catch on before the next millinium. till then, they'll continue with the slap on the wrist and a no-no :eusa_naug
