Having returned from my trip, real time resumes tomorrow
If you live long enough, it becomes obvious that life is a series of connections with many only appreciated in retrospect. Some seemingly isolated incident at the time it happened is only revealed as part of a bigger picture only after a sequence of events is completed.
The principal of the high school at which I taught and was known to be Gay had had a terrible time dealing with any open, positive information about Gay people that I would post in my classroom especially during Gay History month. His was a losing battle often involving losing skirmishes. He needed an ally in his opposition, and what better ally could he want than a member of the Gay community who like a concentration camp capo would be willing to throw her own people under the bus for her advantage.
The Dean of Instruction who had originally encouraged me to transfer from the middle school to the high school, and who then became the heavy in the 1999 events of my Gay History Month display removal and the reprimand that followed, retired at the end of the 2002-2003 academic year. Taking his place was a former assistant principal from another city high school who had worked with the principal when he too was an assistant there. They were friends, and it was natural for the principal to transfer a friend to his school if a position was available.
I had heard of this transfer while I was teaching summer school, but beyond the occasional opinions expressed by faculty about all the new fall assignments that we had read of in the daily paper the morning after the Board made the appointments, I knew nothing about her.
For the first few weeks of school that fall, beyond passing her occasionally in the halls or in the main office where we exchanged polite greetings, I was to know nothing of her, nor have any real conversation with her until in accordance with Paragraph J, a selectively used provision in the faculty handbook that required teachers get permission from the principal for anything they wanted to hang in their classrooms but was actually only applied to positive Gay material, and wanting time to deal with any problems that could result from my request, hoping the superintendent‘s letter would have some effect, I wrote to the principal at the beginning of September for permission for a Gay History Month display.
Instead of a reply to my request coming from the principal, though, I received a reply from his friend, the new Dean of Instruction.
She expressed appreciation for my requesting permission, but she continued, “after checking the various school clubs and organizations on the campus that represent the diverse population of our school, I find no GLBT organization listed. Consequently, since [high school] has no GLBT organization then it follows that no history month display shall be permitted within classrooms or within the building.”
This response came as a surprise for two reasons: first, there was no provision in paragraph J for a designee, and here the principal for the first time passed his decision on to the new Dean; second, there was never a restriction that a group of students could not be acknowledged as existing on our campus unless there was some sort of a club. This seemed to be another example of the practice of creating policies and procedures after the fact, and then applying them retro-actively when it came to my annual requests.
I thought it important to speak with the Dean of Instruction, and it did say at the end of her memo to feel free to do so if I had any questions or concerns. Perhaps the principal, having been stopped in the past by those he attempted to use as his scapegoats, and knowing he could not try that trick again with people who had been on campus, had chosen someone new who would not be all that aware of past goings on. The new Dean needed to know what the history of things were as it seemed she had been placed in the middle of something she might not want to be a part of if she knew what the history was.
So as I was leaving school on the day I got her memo, I headed to the Dean of Instruction‘s office armed with the superintendent‘s letter, the letter that stated in general terms that all school policies applied to all students, and luckily met another teacher on the way who also needed to meet with her. I found the Dean in her office going through boxes of educational material, but when I attempted to speak to her she dismissively told me she had neither the time nor interest to talk at that time. I insisted we talk, as she had invited me to do so without hesitation, and address this new procedure.
Not only did she support the no organization/no display decision, but she stated in no uncertain terms, “There are no Gay kids in high school. They waver back and forth and then settle one way or the other later on.”
There was a later attempt on her part to revise what she said on the assumption I had misunderstood her, and that she had actually said, “I am not aware of any Gay kids on this campus”, but the other teacher who had walked with me to the Dean‘s office to speak with her was standing just outside the door when the Dean made her statement, and had gasped in disbelief and walked away. This teacher held to what she had heard no matter how many times an attempt was made to rewrite the story, or get her to agree she had not heard clearly.
Before writing the request for permission I had spoken to the attorney in the district‘s legal department, presenting her with a number of documents that showed that every time I had followed the policy of asking for permission for a Gay History Month display there was a predictable pattern where the principal would find, or invent, some technicality or policy to prevent such permission, and that the obstruction had not existed before the request. Policies and procedures seemed to come into existence only after permission was sought, and then were used to deny it. So I immediately contacted the district‘s legal office reminding them of this, and pointing out that this no-information-if-there-was-no-club policy was this year‘s example of policy invention. The attorney agreed that this was a little much, and told me to let the Dean know she needed to call the legal office. I wrote a quick note to the dean with the legal department‘s phone number, and received this reply, “I have given your note to [the principal] since he is my immediate supervisor.
Thank you.”
There was no such “no club/no display” policy, so I thought the only result of such a phone call would be to allow the display as they were reaching for straws to prevent it.
However, in a move where appearance was preferable to reality, the principal conceived the idea of having Gay/Straight Alliance on paper, control it for his purposes without actually having a viable one, and in this way control information.
At an earlier meeting with the Union representative, when allowing a GSA was approached as a possible compromise to the problem of having displays, the principal was in favor of such an idea with the one reservation being that the teacher who would be the sponsor could not be “militant”. The principal feared that allowing the club with a sponsor who was dedicated to the needs of the Gay students would result in a visibility that he would find uncomfortable. What was preferred was someone who, while being the sponsor of the club, would be willing to keep it limited and suppressed.
To this end, not only did the principal choose two students he assumed were Gay because of outward appearances, but in looking for the kind of person who was willing to suppress the very club to be sponsored, he assigned the duty to the newly arrived Dean of Instruction who was obviously of the opinion that there were no Gay students in school, and who had initially found what she thought was a new and clever way to prevent a display.
Instead of being a student initiated club proposed and supported by students in accordance with the Equal Access Act that spelled out how non-curriculum clubs were to be established on school campuses, the club became one initiated by the principal and presented as a possibility to two students who had not asked for such a club. The legal procedure so that all such clubs would be treated equally was that students were supposed to propose a club after having found a teacher willing to sponsor it, but here, not only had the principal propose the club, but he chose the sponsor.
The GSA’s purpose, as would become clear, was not to support the students but to initiate a club that would have the job of constructing a display for Gay History Month that could be controlled by the principal. There would be a club; there could be a display, but the display would be strictly controlled by the person who objected to it.
Sadly, as the Gay students on campus did not ask the principal‘s chosen students to be the leaders, as nice as they were, there was no guarantee that these were the best two to begin such a club. Their selection by the principal was suspect. They hadn‘t approached the principal; he approached them, and any students chosen by a principal for such an important chore would have been thrilled that they were seen as responsible, but these two students were not aware of the back, smoke filled room shenanigans that were taking place, and this put a lot of pressure unfairly on them.
The next move was predictable. The as yet to be created club, which had yet to meet, and might not even have any members, was given sole responsibility for any Gay History Month display. Similar month displays for all other groups to which students might belong had no such control as they could be commemorated by any groups of students, individual teacher, or combinations of both.
An announcement was made within a few days of my conversation with the Dean and the principal‘s phone call to the legal office, “Attention, students: There will be an organizational meeting of the …Student Gay and Lesbian Club in Room 195, Thursday, September 18th, at 2:30 p.m. [the Dean of Instruction] will be the temporary sponsor.”
More than a few teachers saw a red flag go up with the name of the club being the “Gay and Lesbian Club. The purpose of a GSA was to allow for support in a hostile atmosphere, and with the inclusion of Straight peers, the fear of one‘s sexuality being revealed before that student was ready was eased by the possibility that a student in attendance was one of the straight ones. A student could be assumed Gay or Straight in a GSA, but not so in a Gay and Lesbian Club. Some teachers expressed their suspicion that the club was called this to limit membership so it would remain invisible. Worse, some thought that the intention of the name was to guarantee no membership, and once again the principal could deny a display while still insisting he had tried to support one.
The school was in the Buckle of the Bible Belt, and the district refused to include Gay students in policies on bullying, harassment, and nondiscrimination, so members could easily become targets for harassment and bullying.
Further slowing the possibility of decent attendance was scheduling the meeting twenty minutes after school let out, whereas all other clubs met either in the morning when students were arriving, or at lunch when they were already there; not when the students were leaving. The ability to attend such a meeting was dependent on rides and after school job schedules. The time limited attendance.
Its being held so inconveniently and within an empty building also implied there was something unacceptable or not school related about it. Everything seemed to say either the club was not going to exist because of lack of members, making any acknowledgment of Gay History Month something that just didn‘t work out in spite of the best of intentions, or the membership would be kept controllably small.
Helping to control the situation further than the principal‘s meddling, and to keep control tight by removing the students‘ right to choose their own sponsor, the appointed sponsor announced to the two students who attended the first meeting that they could only have the club if she were the sponsor per the principal‘s directive which went against the announcement’s original claim that “[the Dean of Instruction] will be the temporary sponsor.”
Needless to say, as a way to have the club the students complied. However, they had been led to believe by the announcement that they would eventually choose their sponsor. It was, after all from what they could see, a temporary assignment until they had met to organize and choose their own sponsor. As it was to turn out, believing this, they were prepared to approach three teachers they thought supportive enough to ask them to be the sponsor, two of whom were straight.
The Dean‘s next step was to write a constitution by filling out a generic club constitution form that was meant only to be a guide without any input from the students, which did not take into account the nature and purpose of the club that would have been relevant to a proper constitution. With no chance for discussion the two students were told to sign the constitution at their second after school meeting, and it was then put in a file giving the impression that the school had a legitimate and viable Gay/Straight Alliance.
Now having a club, the Dean wrote a memo to me stating that only the GSA could erect a Gay History Month display. I, however, could not.
“Exhibit for GLBT History Month
Interested students will be producing an educational exhibit for GLBT History Month. As the Dean of Instruction, I will supervise this activity. My interest is effectively serving all students, consequently, please note only work from students will be exhibited.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation.”
No such limits were ever placed on any other display, or any other teacher about any other group. There were no ethnic clubs, but teachers were allowed to post displays during Black History Month. Again, I was the only teacher who received this memo making it very directed.
Not only did the sponsor not supply any helpful information beyond giving poster board and markers to the students who did show up at one of the meetings wanting to erect a display, she did not allow a student to mention the Young Gay and Lesbian Alliance (YGLA), a local teen support and social group, that might be of interest to the members of the club and a source of information. She would not allow the student to promote this group because it was in the Gay District, which she referred to as the “Adult Entertainment District” as if it were a Red Light District in a larger city. Her implication was that such a place and those who frequented it were inherently indecent, when in reality it was the social area for the Gay Community in a Bible Belt city that still required a Gay Ghetto having bars, a Gay friendly church, and a community center that provided meeting space for various GLBT organizations, educational programs, and other resources important to young GLBT people who needed correct information
The purpose of a Gay/Straight Alliance was to help reduce the violence that was born of misinformation, and to help the students gain a degree of self-esteem and appreciation of their own worth. To label the Gay District as she did was a furthering of stereotypes and negative attitudes that did not comply with the club‘s purpose.
Because the sponsor would not let the members of the GSA discuss YGLA during meetings, I once again handed a flyer to the principal that could be put on the community bulletin board. The name, address, and phone number of YGLA, as well as a generic description of its purpose and who might want to attend was printed in plain block lettering on an 81/2” x11” piece of paper. No picture or anything even remotely objectionable was on the flyer. Even if a student wished not to attend, the phone number might be important to know.
The Dean, again, and not the principal, placed the flyer back in my mailbox as “un-postable” even though it complied with the purpose and restriction of the Community Bulletin Board whose purpose was for posting off campus, non-school related events and organizations relevant to students. I immediately wrote a note to the principal since I had handed the flyer to him just as I had done with anything else for that bulletin board asking, “Is the Dean of Instruction (the sponsor) in charge of bulletin boards?”
He replied, “On this one she is.”
The Dean, who had clearly stated that there were no Gay kids in high school, was now in charge of the club that was supposed to be a refuge and source of information and support for them, and had become, at this point, the person in charge of the bulletin board donated by the Gay community for everyone’s use, but which had become by the principals’ decree the only place upon which any Gay related information could appear on campus if it were allowed at all. The principal had changed the purpose of the bulletin board to control Gay information, and he had an ally now who would help him prevent things from being posted. The flyer never went up.
Fortunately the more enterprising and independent students did go to the meeting place for YGLA and got information. Sadly this was information I had in my classroom, but which I had to bring to YGLA in case the sponsor and principal found some way to forbid the students from coming to my room to get it. I had collected a lot of information over the years, but I did not want any made up complications based on the students‘ coming to my classroom for this information resulting in some trumped up charge of violating the memo about the display because I got directly involved. It might have appeared a bit paranoid, but with all the games I had seen played, and not knowing this friend of the principal all that well, or why she was cooperating with him so tightly, I did not want to be the invented complication that cancelled a display. I did, however, want the kids to learn something, and I had the resources.
I knew the adults who ran YGLA, so I hung around one of the meetings to help the students find information, and to answer questions about local and national Gay History, telling stories of the old days in various places. They were surprised with the information and the famous people they were finding out about.
When the students brought their posters to the next GSA meeting, the sponsor immediately censored any poster that specifically mentioned “Gay” or “Lesbian” by replacing the headings with such innocuous titles as “Famous Women”. Instead of setting the display up at eye level, the Dean put the display very low to the ground in a library display window in the main hall. This placement effectively discouraged anyone‘s really noticing or reading the information because to do so required a person to crouch down.
When October ended and the purpose of the display completed it was quickly removed, and the GSA met only sporadically a few times before it ceased all together when the Dean got more interested in the lunch time chess tournament she had begun. She had done her job well by supplying the principal with the person who would sponsor a GSA, but who would control it and use it to help the principal look good without any reality behind the look.
The short lived club had been effective for two purposes: a constitution on file could be pointed to as tangible evidence of “support” even if the club never met; and anyone wishing to have a Gay History Month display in their classroom was prevented from doing so as the club was the only entity on campus that could have a display. The GSA was compliant, not “militant”. The dean preferred to have the students come to her office and talk one-on-one rather than hold meetings, which rendered the club invisible on campus. Its name was never heard on the public address system; its presence never part of club activities; its name appeared in no campus publication. Its inclusion in the club section of the yearbook was denied.
The students and their zeal had not been used to work for them, but for the principal, and the club was used to suppress the very information that club members as well as their peers should have been given. The sponsor continued to be the principal‘s strongest ally in controlling the very people she was supposed to be helping and supporting.
Thinking that this was a little insulting to my intelligence, and also seeing it as another expression of the attitude that we Gay people are simple but happy, and we can be fooled by crumbs, I continued to have information available in my classroom when it was appropriate and without any fanfare.
Although he was fixated with anything Gay I might have posted on my classroom doors, the principal seemed blind to the fact that I used my doors as bulletin boards for more than Gay information, posting things related to literature, current events, and the occasional newspaper story that centered on the school, a team, or one of the students. Besides the students who might have checked to see what was posted if they noticed a change, teachers did the same. Education did not have to be only between bells and unswervingly related to the curriculum.
In my classroom I had ships, maps, bottles of dirt from different parts of the United States, things I had bought driving from Oklahoma to Boston and stopping at every historic place I came upon, action figures of Shakespeare and Poe, and any number of things that by themselves were not part of the curriculum, but could be used to enhance it.
Sometime in the beginning of that January I had posted some news articles on my classroom‘s front door among which were a few concerning important Gay news items, some being of a local nature. We had a Gay/Straight Alliance, perhaps in name only, but in existence, so there was an official acknowledgement of these students who may have benefited from this information for which they may not have had any other outlet.
I received a letter from the Dean of Instruction after posting one Gay article among a number of articles about many other non-Gay things directing me to remove the Gay articles and submit them to her for permitted inclusion on the community bulletin board where they belonged. However, since they were news articles and not announcements for activities sponsored by off campus organizations, they were not what the Board was intended for. However, the purpose of the bulletin board was changed, again, so that exclusively for Gay news, it was. None of the other news articles that were posted along with the Gay topic were addressed.
Her letter said in part:
“Similarly to how the Constitution states citizens have the right of “freedom from religion”, students have the right of “freedom from” another individual’s personal viewpoint. This is of special concern when the individual is in a position of authority and the students have no choice and are required to be present and subjected to information within a teacher’s room.
As you and I are aware, teachers do not shed their constitutional, including First Amendment, rights when they become teachers or when they enter the school house door. The question for the teacher to ask is whether it is appropriate to express a personal viewpoint while teaching students. It is not that the teacher does not have the “right” to express his personal views. Rather, it is important for the teacher to consider the effect that personal expression may have on the students in the classroom, on his effectiveness as a teacher, and on the parents of students.”
The first paragraph contained some of the very arguments we had been advancing to the district so it would make sure that the Gay students had the freedom from the often damaging “personal view points” of others, and could have the opportunity for a good education without having them drop out because others could say what they wanted about them, and doing what they wanted to do to them, while the Gay students could not even get some positive information in school without it being censored, limited, or extremely obscure. I was offended by the idea that making Gay information available was the same as “subjecting” students to it. Did we “subject” students to heterosexuality when we covered works of literature that an author addressed to someone of the opposite sex?
Not long after this I handed in a pamphlet announcing the creation of an Oklahoma City chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) for posting on the bulletin board. The Dean chose not to post the pamphlet on the community bulletin board because, even though it gave the day, the place of the meetings, and a contact phone number so people could get more information and find out the actual time of the meeting, it was her judgment that in spite of this and a description of what the purpose of PFLAG was, the pamphlet was just too vague.
Between the use of the GSA for limiting information, followed by its disappearance, and now this limited free speech zone introduced as the new purpose of the bulletin board donated by the Gay Community to answer the principal‘s expressed desire to have a bulletin board open to all community groups, but now under the total control of someone who had claimed there were no Gay students in high school, it was obvious to me, anyway, that the principal had found a person he could count on for support and obstruction.
The principal meanwhile had made it known that he was going to retire at the end of the year.
There was another attempt that spring to get the Board to make the language of the policies on Non-discrimination, Bullying and Harassment, as contained in the Student and Parent Handbook, more in line with the letter we had from the superintendent that stated all policies applied to all students. Although that letter existed, it was still obvious that there were those who would play around until that ability was taken away from them by specific language. The plea of ignorance of the inclusiveness of the policies was welcomed by some.
Before the accidental fall which resulted in her pulling her shoulder, and the required extended absence, the former Dean had asked the principal for permission to hang a flyer for the Young Gay and Lesbian Alliance on the Community Bulletin Board. This was a somewhat odd move because, beyond being the sponsor of the Gay Straight Alliance on campus, or at least claiming the title although the actual club had not met at all during the current year, she was the administrator who had the keys to the bulletin board because, as the principal said, she was in charge of it, and knew the policies, there was no reason to have done that. Like all other administrators she could have posted it, or like all sponsors she could have given it to the sponsor of the Student Council who would have done it.
According to an email to the principal, she felt she could advertise the YGLA meetings now that a local bar had closed. It was only one out of the six bars that had been in the Gay District, or as she had referred to it “the adult entertainment district” when not allowing the mention of YGLA at any school GSA meeting. She had a problem with this bar which could have stemmed from her impression it was the seed that gave birth to that area, It was the first Gay bar established in what would be the Gay District that grew around it, or for any number of personal reasons. But, it was obvious by her action that she did not have a problem with the existence of the other five bars, but only with this one. Its closure did not change the character of the area
The acting principal, and a Lesbian herself, who was filling in for the principal who was also out because of a fall he took in the football stadium, came to my room to ask about the purpose of the Community Bulletin Board that was presented by the Gay Community in 2002, and whether or not the bulletin board was for such postings like that for YGLA. I explained why the board was purchased, and why, according to what it was intended for, the posting was appropriate.
While the former Dean was beginning her post accident leave, she sent me a copy of what she intended to hang, and I offered some changes for inclusiveness and clarity that she found acceptable, and I took this as a positive change. I submitted the flyer to the acting principal after it was approved by the former Dean, along with the relevant emails between the dean and myself to show that what I gave the acting principal was done with, and not in spite of the former Dean. I was rather surprised when the same acting principal who seemed originally in favor of posting the flyer, sent me a memo saying the flyer was not going up until the former Dean returned to work. This seemed unnecessary as the former Dean had okayed the flyer as presented. It looked like a stall, if not a passive-aggressive way of applying a pocket veto in such a way as to make it look like the acting principal’s hands were tied in spite of her good intentions. This tactic might have been new to her, but was part of past practices.
I was not aware of any policy stating that postings were dedicated. If the person consulted about the purpose of the bulletin board and the person making the initial request were in agreement on what was to be posted, a delay was questionable. There was also speculation about whether or not the former Dean would return, or sit out the remainder of the year on medical leave. This further brought the delay into question. If the former Dean‘s absence was on-going for an extended period of time, or she was not allowed to return for the rest of the year by her doctor, students should not have been denied information in this manner, and for an invented practice.
In the past, discrimination on this campus was often subtle and blamed on circumstances which were offered as beyond one’s control, when in fact those circumstances were of one’s own invention. I requested a copy of the applicable policy on this.
I passed on my concerns on this to the former Dean who had asked permission for the YGLA flyer in the first place, hoping, since she talked a good game, she would step up and demand it be posted.
Instead she wrote in an email, “Don’t know what to say to you J.Q. After my injury, it is all I can do to connect the dots effectively and walk normally most of the time. I sure cannot second guess what others do or why they do it. In any event, I am sure [acting and actual principals] only have the best interest of children at heart as do I.”
She once again folded when she needed to be strong. In this case, as in future ones, at the first sign of opposition she would just fold, only to claim success when others stuck with something and brought about results.
While this was going on, a flyer for a religious camp was posted all around the building, and not just on the Community Bulletin Board, obviously by someone who saw no problem with doing this as religious posters had always been treated better than others and were not forbidden as others were. Although there were two names of students to contact for further information on them, and their source readily identifiable, the religious flyers were left hanging even after I made their presence known to administration who claimed there needed to be an investigation to find out who had hung them.
In my documented experience, within moments of an objection or complaint being expressed about anything Gay related that I may have posted in my classroom or on my doors, if an administrator had not removed it first, I was generally given the directive to remove any Gay posting if not immediately, by the end of the day at the very latest. I would then be notified to attend a meeting in the principal‘s office where I would get a lecture on policy and process, with the feeblest of explanations offered why such material was improper.
The religious posters continued to hang for days.
When she returned from her medical leave I contacted the former Dean who suggested the delay in posting might have just been a question of someone not being able to find the key to the bulletin board. She offered this even though the acting principal had sent her refusal to hang the flyer through email, and I had forwarded this to the former Dean, and she could have said something at that time. I rearranged all the letters of “it is not going to be posted” and, “we are going to wait until [the former dean] returns”, and found no way to get the sentence, “we don’t have the key” out of it. Not all the letters were there. Also, there were two sets of keys, one held by thee dean, the other by the sponsor of the Student Council.
Also, after the former Dean had returned to school, I found that the hard copy of the revised YGLA flyer I had placed in her mailbox when I originally submitted a copy of it to the acting principal was back in my own mailbox with a note attached signed by the former Dean informing me that I would have to get it approved by the Principal. There seemed to be a lot of unnecessary repetition.
Writing an email to inform the acting principal of placing yet another copy of the YGLA flyer in her mailbox for approval, I was still a little confused why the flyer was first denied any posting only to have this changed to the need to await the return of the former Dean from medical leave, and upon her return, why the former Dean would pass it back to me to begin the approval process all over. It would appear that the dean just needed to say the flyer should go up since it had only been put on hold until her return. I wrote to her recounting the chain of events in full, and she replied,
“Don’t know what to tell you. I just voluntarily work [here] and have to do what I am directed to do just like anyone else. Everything has to go through the couple of people in charge. I asked both of them about it today, but they were somewhat busy. Anyway, check with them again and when they give it to me to post, it will get put up right away.”
The final response from the acting principal at the end of this dance was that from that point forward no flyers from off campus organizations would be posted on the Community Bulletin Board. In the past the purpose of the bulletin board was modified. In this case it was completely changed.
Flyers for religious events, groups, and organizations continued to appear sporadically throughout the building, while the one place to which anything for Gay students had been limited was now eliminated. This was reminiscent of those places that banned all clubs to prevent the lawful organizing of Gay/Straight Alliances. It would appear that to prevent the posting of a YGLA flyer a new practice had been instituted by the front office, much as was done in the past in an attempt to find clever ways to prevent positive Gay information.
Later when the former Dean placed a flyer for the upcoming second Gay Prom on the Community Bulletin Board without asking permission, as she should have done with the YGLA flyer as the GSA sponsor, she was directed to remove it, and she did so without objection other than sending me an email in which she questioned why anyone who was Gay or Lesbian, as our acting principal was, could so freely work against Gay students.
How ironic was that?
She obviously forgot or chose to ignore her actions when she first had come to the campus, and, as a Lesbian herself, had supported the actions of the principal in controlling, limiting, preventing, or removing positive Gay information wherever it appeared.
I placed a few Gay Prom flyers around the building near some Gay friendly teachers‘ classrooms. The acting principal removed one while I was standing near it; some others disappeared over time; and one had the words “fruit” and “homo” scrawled on it. Meanwhile, the religious posters remained up even though they were near some of the Prom posters I had purposely placed by them.
Going before the School Board during the community comments section of the agenda to push for the inclusion of GLBT students in school policies was a recurring practice. In the days before one such meeting I combed through hard-copy documents, emails, and district publications to find all references to the district‘s claim that their policies were inclusive. Why come up with your own words when quoting the district would come to the same thing?
A teacher from another high school in the city who had been approached by students to form a Gay/Straight Alliance, and who had brought about fifty student to the recent annual AIDS Walk, notified me that she was bringing some students to speak to the Board .This would have been the first time that students, presently in the system, were going before the Board to plead their own case.
We had been hoping for students to come forward, but in a system where there was no indication that they would be respected and their needs addressed, this had not happened. The most we could do was talk about it and hope some would show up, but we had to be careful not to appear that we had forced any student to speak in public to the Board. As far as anyone knew, our GSA sponsor, the former Dean having now been promoted to assistant principal, still had things on hold, and no one was told if any students from our school would be there also, or if she would even be there herself.
I was sitting toward the front of the auditorium where Board meetings were held, going over my remarks, when students from my school began to gather near me. This was not out of friendship, but because they needed to sit toward the front as the group was to be recognized for winning a state drama contest. Not having been to a Board meeting before, one of the students asked me if they had to stay for the whole meeting. They were glad to hear that usually, once recognitions were made and awards and certificates given out with the requisite posing for handshake pictures with district leaders who did nothing to help the kids get whatever it was they won, people involved in that section of the agenda would leave before the boring business began.
There were a lot of recognitions that night after which the Board president called for a few minutes break, and the large crowd left.
In order to speak to the Board during the Public Comments section of the agenda which came toward the end of the meetings, a person had to fill out a form before the meeting. Each person got three minutes to speak after they were called to the podium.
At this meeting the actual business items on the agenda were rushed through, and we came to the Public Comments section rather quickly. There were a few people still in the meeting room. Some of them were students.
When the Public Comments began, the teacher from another school explained how everyday she had to make decisions to either enforce a policy, or ignore the infraction for convenience sake, and how her addressing a problem was made easier by her being able to show the offending students which rule they had violated. Sometimes it was only this concrete reference that made for cooperative students. She likened any choice she may have made to ignore an incident for convenience to the Boards conveniently leaving out Gay students from its policies, as both were basically examples of avoiding responsibility.
The two students from her high school approached the podium when their names were called, and both spoke from the heart. One spoke of friends who had committed suicide or dropped out before they finished high school because the harassment and negative attitudes were just too much for them. The other spoke as a heterosexual person who was harassed for choosing celibacy until marriage, and saw the value of sexual orientation protection as it cut both ways.
Then, much to my surprise the next two names called to approach the podium were those of students from my school. I was thrilled, especially since they had been there for a whole other reason, and had apparently stayed. This took courage.
Neither approached the podium, however.
Although the now assistant principal and in-name-only sponsor of the Gay/Straight Alliance had reformed it to annoy the person who had gotten the retired principal’s position she had been denied in spite of her desperate attempts to earn it. The re-formed GSA held no meetings nor did it do anything visible on Campus. Its two members would meet with the former dean in her office with no announcement of the meeting. Other GLBT students on campus with whom I was familiar had often asked her to formalize the groups existence, but nothing ever came of it beyond the promise the take the necessary steps to do that, steps that were never taken.
So, once again, there were two students who, though they were part of something important to their GLBT peers on campus, were getting no guidance or encouragement on how that could be true. They, like the previous two GSA members, were being used by the assistant principal to enhance her standing in the GLBT Community, although the community rejected her non-productive self-promotion seeing it for what it was.
This was unfair to and abusive of these two students for whom she posed as their best ally while controlling information and activity. There could not be two GSAs on campus, and any group of students who might have wanted a more realistic and effective one, and who then brought their proposal to the principal where told there was already a GSA so they could not have the one they wanted. This not only set up the GSA that existed for failure, but it did not do much for the reputation of the two students who were seen as the assistant principal’s pets and allies in obstructing an active GSA.
They were being used even as they thought they were trailblazers.
These were the two students from my school whose names had been called.
As I was sitting toward the front of the room, I assumed the two students had moved to seats further to the back after the break since they had not returned to the seats they were in before it. Then I figured that once they had received their certificates of recognition, they had simply left as their earlier question implied they might. I was disappointed they had decided against speaking, but I knew from experience, speaking to the Board could be intimidating. Instead of four students from two different schools speaking which could have had some strength, only two from the same school had spoken. This could have been interpreted as inclusive policy language not being such a big deal, as students affected by the policy language saw no need to speak, much the same way a former principal interpreted the lack of student interest in his nominal “Gay Club” as a lack of a problem.
The next morning I received an email from the former Dean who had been sitting at the back of the auditorium. She claimed that after getting the parent‘s permission the week before, something that now, years later, would seem to have been a questionable claim as the parent of one student has become nationally known in recent years for starting a movement of mothers to step in as surrogates for those Gay people whose own mothers refused to be part of important events in their lives like weddings, after coming to accept her son’s sexual orientation after wrestling with her religious beliefs long after this meeting, she had asked one of the students from our school to speak a few days before the meeting and had asked the other on the night of the meeting as he was there anyway. Both of these students were in the school‘s loosely established GSA.
According to her email, sitting in the back of the auditorium the former Dean had seen a mid level administrator go down to where the students were still sitting after they had been recognized for their drama award, and after whispering something to the Drama Coach with whom they had been sitting go out into the foyer just before the Public Comments. The Drama Coach then got up to leave and motioned to the two students who had signed up to speak, and the three of them left the auditorium. The other drama students had already left.
One of the students then came back into the auditorium and informed our GSA sponsor, the former Dean, that they did not have to speak to the whole Board as they had spoken to one of the board members outside. Since no Board member had left the room, it was unsure who they had actually spoken to. Someone calling the students out of the auditorium could have meant someone, for whatever reason, did not want them to speak.
According to further emails and conversations, the former Dean‘s follow up investigation revealed that the Executive Director of the Learning Community (a middle level administrator, and the person over the high school, the middle school that fed into it, and all the elementary schools that in turn fed into the middle school) had been the one who had sent someone into the auditorium to get the Drama Coach and the students to go out to the foyer where she represented herself as equal to the Board so that speaking to her would be like speaking to them.
This was somewhat borne out by one defense of the Executive Director offered by another administrator which claimed that the E.D. wanted the two students to know that as this was a public meeting and records were open to the public, the fact that they spoke and what they said would be public knowledge, and they could face negative consequences at school. In this version of the events her intent was portrayed as wanting to protect the students. However, it also could have been to protect the veneer of the school‘s image as she wanted it perceived: educational and trouble free.
Either way, this showed that even the Executive Director of the Learning Community was aware conditions in the district were not positive for Gay students. Instead of protecting students from an ongoing atmosphere, she should have been taking steps to end it. She had sat in on a few of my earlier meetings with principals and was very aware of the situation and how things were wrongly handled. She was not new to this whole thing. She was negligent in that, rather than help end negative treatment when she was in a position to do so, she was content to let the conditions continue while protecting students on a case by case basis if she became aware of the need.
In another defense the students had approached the Executive Director of the Learning Community because it was more convenient for them to talk to her and then leave immediately, rather than wait to speak and leave later. This version had the major problem with it being that they did not leave the auditorium until someone came to get them. Neither had left bthe room before this to have had the opportunity to suggest that option.
Both versions, however, shared the uncertainty as to whether what the students said was passed on, and if it were, was it presented purely, or was it edited and reworked to suit this administrator.
When asked directly through email, the Executive Director responded that she had never “prohibited” anyone from speaking to the Board. Up to this point there had been so many dodges to questions, semantic games, and rewordings of things already said, I placed this in the same category of the other district evasions. She had been asked if she prevented the students from speaking, but she professed she had not prohibited them. There was a difference, so the question for all intents and purposes went unanswered. If she were to be accused of prevention she would have offered undeniable proof that she had not prohibited, distracting the Board from the actual charge.
I sent an email about all of this to as many people as I had in my address book, and this included the superintendent, the president of the Board, and other high up administrators.
Within the required ten day period after that Board meeting, the superintendent sent out the letters to all those who had spoken as Board policy required. It was evasively vague, and to some extent rather insulting to the two students who had spoken, as in spite of what they told of their experiences in the district and those of friends, the superintendent informed us all,
“Because it is a priority for the district to provide a safe and secure environment for all students, the policies as written convey the message to students and staff that harassment, bullying or discrimination in any form against ANY student is not and will not be tolerated…harassment, bullying, or discrimination in any form against ANY student is not and will not be tolerated.”
I wasn‘t all that sure that the two students would have agreed, and when I ran into one of them at a peace event he told me as much.
For ten years, no matter how we communicated with them, whether emails, hard copy memos and letters, or appearances before the Board, those who advocated for the Gay students always presented facts and studies to back up our assertions. We never relied on the tack that it was true simply because we said so. And, yet, here once again a superintendent in the district was claiming an assertion true merely on the strength that repetition bestowed truth.
I wrote to the superintendent to ask for the supporting data.
“In light of our consistently presenting verifiable information over the years to back our assertion that the language as contained in the Student and Parent Handbook is not clearly inclusive, I would respectfully request those studies, surveys and reports that back the statement as contained in your letter dated November 7, 2006 and quoted above, which beyond ignoring our evidence would also seem to have ignored the input of the Committee entrusted to revise the Handbook based on their actual experience as classroom teachers in implementing it in the schools where it applies, and therefore, would logically know more than people in the student-less central office which revisions needed to be made to make your statement as quoted above true.”
The response was a request from the legal department to forward any data I might have and a list of any cases of harassment, as if every harassed student would have come to me. If I couldn‘t name a case, it wasn‘t happening, again, in spite of what the two students had presented in public meeting. It was stalling by repetition.
I assured the legal department I would produce the data, but in the meantime would have liked to offer as evidence of a problem the survey that the Board President directed the Superintendent in public session to institute to see if what was being presented by members of the Oklahoma City taxpaying community and patrons of the district were merely isolated instances or symptoms of a greater problem. But, I could not, as that survey‘s being conducted never happened in the two years since the public directive was given in a district whose strong requirements to follow directives I knew only too well through experience.
I would also have liked to present a transcribed recording of all four students who spoke in public session to the Board on Monday, November 6, 2006 , as testimony to illustrate the need for inclusive language, but I was unable to do that as an administrator by presenting herself as the equivalent of the Board prevented two students from exercising their right to make their comments in public, denying the public‘s right to hear them.
I would, however, be able to provide for my part at least anecdotal evidence which could be verified by hard copies of documents that were too numerous to reproduce at my own expense, and which, although I would gladly sit and review with legal, would not let out of my possession, that showed that there was an attitude among administrators that translated into actions that were detrimental to the needs, safety and well being of our Gay Students.
I then referred legal to the many emails which they along with other members of Central Administration had received over the years, among which was a recent one from the last academic year wherein it was recounted how a teacher saw no problem with students’ choosing to use the word “Gay” as a synonym for “stupid” in a very public display during the annual health fair at my school.
I recommended that the legal department access certain web sites and review the research that had been done, and I reminded them that when the School Climate Survey was suggested on at least one campus in this district, the misrepresentation of the suggestion as a directive as opposed a suggestion for consideration, had the principal warn the teacher about possible termination as a result of the complaints of some local clergy who had been misled.
As far as contributions of the Revision Committee of the Student/ Parent Handbook due to obviously important nature of the discussion, I was sure the district had in its possession the file assembled by the chair of the committee which contained all the work, suggestions, and rationale of the Handbook Revision Committee which met at least twice . I was sure these notes and the file were readily accessible to them at headquarters, and were not somehow misplace.
The superintendent, meanwhile had written in a district related newsletter,
“Providing the school Children of this district with a safe and nurturing learning environment is a priority of the administration. It is one of our strategic AIMS and Goals and it is also a top concern for the community.
In October the staff released to the Board of education such a plan that is known as the Student Code of Conduct, This plan is based on and utilizes data-driven models, strategies, and tools”.
The article ended with, “to allow for an environment where children may continue to improve academically, we must all work together to make safety an unwavering priority.”
It was almost obscenely insensitive to our Gay students considering past events and the questionable activities surrounding the Code of Conduct and the Handbook.
After I had questioned the actions of the Executive Director of the Learning Community at the Board meeting where the two students had not spoken, and after I wrote to the superintendent about the insensitivity of her written remarks, I was called to the principal‘s office. I was issued a written reprimand for allegedly violating the district‘s computer use policy by sending emails during my planning period when no students were in the room, and during those times when my students were involved with their administratively mandated interactive computer work to prepare for the End of Instruction Tests when a teacher was totally useless for anything other than nominal supervision.
Considering that for the last seven years even the legal department said nothing, but had responded to my emails and sent inquiries of their own, I found the timing of this reprimand to be a little too coincidental. The first time this “offense” came to the attention of the principal by way of Executive Director of the Learning Community was two days after the school Board meeting where the students were kept from speaking, and after I had complained about this.
By contract, if a teacher had committed an offense of which he may not have been aware, the teacher was given a warning with a reprimand issued only if the teacher persisted in the newly disclosed offense. In this case, the first step was skipped.
My Union Representative was as confused by this step skipping as I was, since I was expected to know a policy that had to be brought to the attention of the principal who was now reprimanding me. Even she, apparently, had not been aware that there was such a policy when she had answered my emails about the morning scanning problems.
The principal had a list of about seven emails that were sent at times that she alleged violated the newly discovered policy. None of them were personal. They were all related either to the Student and Parent Handbook, or the problems that had occurred at my morning scanning station. She considered the number excessive, and this warranted skipping steps in the contract‘s discipline provisions.
I grieved this according to the contract because I found it wrong that a teacher was held to policies, and could be punished for violating ones, that even administrators were not aware of, while the administrators just as guilty received no discipline, especially when administrators had ample opportunity to point out any policy violation before jumping to a written reprimand. The timing of it all bothered me. Nothing was ever said until I sent the two post School Board meeting critical emails. I wasn‘t sure, and actually hoped it was the case, that the principal was pressured to do this and would have preferred not to have had to do it. It was just one more instance where when not silenced and refusing to keep his place, the Gay teacher was disciplined for some trumped up reason.
This was the first step in what would be the following year’s attempt to claim that after 14 years of excellent teaching and involvement in improving education in the district. I had suddenly become incompetent enough to be dismissed, an attempt that was exposed for what it was in a district court, silencing the message, the need for the inclusion of GLBT students in school district policy, by eliminating the messenger.
Over the two years since she had somewhat started weakly advocating for Gay students, I had been constantly advised by some people to lighten up and be a little more forgiving of those things the Diversity Club sponsor had done that had resulted in slowing Gay progress rather than promoting it when she first transferred to the high school as the Dean of Instruction. The fact that she had changed the name of the Gay/Straight Alliance to the more generic Diversity Club was, to me, evidence that she was still reluctant to take a strong stand to protect GLBT students on campus and that she was still protecting her administrative standing for her own advantage.
However, her habit of talking a good game with promises of what she was going to do only to either not deliver or find some excuse that conveniently justified her not doing what needed to be done, only to then claim after the fact that it was because of her secret backroom maneuvering that anything was ever accomplished, still annoyed me. So while I was reporting those instances that promoted a Gay-hostile environment, I was cautiously assuming she was properly handling those complaints that she claimed students were bringing her, even though I had to work at being good about thinking positive.
The former Dean initially back pedaled a bit in her usual fashion when I asked her to supply the number of complaints she had received. I made this request as a result of the attorney‘s request for proof of student complaints, and I let the former Dean know why I was requesting the information. Rather than supply anything to me, she explained that not all harassment and bullying complaints were based on sexual orientation.
This was a given, so I pressed her once more so I could bring the relevant information with me to my meeting with the attorney. The bigger bomb that she dropped was that even though students brought her complaints, she did not pass these on since the complainant did not want to take any further action.
The mandatory and legal process, as verified through an email from the legal department and known by every employee, was that any complaint brought to a district employee, whether pursued or not by the complainant, had to be passed on to the next level to make sure there was a record of the complaint. It could also add to statistics necessary for decision making, and aid in shaping policy and procedure. If fear was the major reason a complainant chose not to follow through, the complaint could be handled in an anonymous manner for the protection of the student or students. There was a law about this and every employee knew about it.
As an administrator the former Dean had to have known this. As someone who wanted to be seen as an advocate for the safety of Gay students, her collecting this data and passing it on in the proper way would have been extremely beneficial to the students, and her much sought after reputation. But, while she constantly told whatever audience was interested in listening that the number of complaints showed there was a systemic problem, and that she was beloved enough by students to approached by them, her not passing on these complaints to the next level rendered them practically non-existent.
This had given the obvious impression to those we constantly pled with to make the language in the handbook more inclusive that we were making things up.
I saw this as a betrayal of the students she should have been helping, especially as she was the sponsor of the Diversity Club, nee Gay/Straight Alliance, whose responsibility this was. I also saw it as a threat to what we could be about to get.
Just as she used the “Gay Issue” originally to bolster her position with the old principal for possible personal gain, and then, when that did not pay off, attempted to annoy the person who did get the job by
creating an adversarial relationship between him and me based on the Gay thing, she seemed to enjoy using her title of club sponsor as proof of her advocacy without actually doing anything. It was almost as if she wanted the accolades without wanting to do the work needed to earn them.
The lack of complaints claimed by the Board president and which initially seemed to be an embarrassment for him, turned out to actually be an embarrassment for those of us who had spoken before the Board basing much of what we had to say on the number of complaints of which, apparently, there was no record. This put all three suggestions for more inclusive language in a very weak position because, as we thought we were speaking truthfully and had made every effort to do so, it now looked as if we had been fabricating evidence to push a false premise.
I spent the next few days making copies of my suggestions for the policy language in the Handbook; highlighting the contradictions and the resolutions for them. I also copied the two letters from both 2003 and 2004 preparing to defend my suggestions in case at the final Handbook Committee meeting there was opposition to any of the suggestions for new language to the policies on Nondiscrimination, Bullying, and Harassment. I even rewrote the Handbook language incorporating each of the three suggestions so the committee would see how each would read.
I was nervous, but ready. But, as in the past, the other members of the committee were new to this, so if their hesitation resulted in waiting until next year, whereas it would have been one year for them, for me it would have been wait-number-nine.
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