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The News-Herald
http://www.thenewsherald.com
A Heritage Newspaper

May 3, 2000
Student speaks out about harassment in school
By Paula Evans Neuman, Senior Staff Writer

WOODHAVEN - Thomas Sutter, 17, is harassed every day in school.

He is an exchange student from Switzerland spending his senior year at Woodhaven High School.

And he is gay.

Ironically, one of the reasons he came to the United States was to escape the prejudice he felt from the residents of his small Alpine village.

It has been much worse for him here, Tom said.

School officials have tried to keep him safe and free from the taunts, the jabbing and the grabbing he endures every day in the hallways.

But they can't be everywhere at every time.

Tom began the school year trying to be unobtrusive. He didn't tell anyone he was gay.

But the harassment "was bad from the first day on," he said.

Tom "fits a stereotype where many gay kids don't," said his host father, Michael Neubecker of Brownstown Township.

"He can't hide. A lot of the harassment against him has been from his mannerisms and his actions, which are natural for him."

Tom has never lied about who he is. When students asked him point blank if he was gay, he told the truth.

As a result, he's been assaulted, threatened and insulted with every derogatory term his tormentors - mostly boys - can come up with.

Tom's German accent and his European style of dress probably make him even more of a target, Woodhaven High School Principal Michael Vogel said.

Tom is different and American teens don't tolerate different very well, he added.

"I think part of it is just the nature of high school kids and the mentality kids have today," Vogel said. "There's always a lot of putdown in the way they address each other. A lot of it is kidding, but that has an edge to it that has grown over the years."

For instance, for many high school students, the slang for something they don't like is this phrase:"That's so gay."

The words "have taken on a connotation that doesn't necessarily imply sex, but kids kind of use it that way," Vogel said.

Anti-gay harassment probably occurs every day in every high school in America, he added, despite increasing awareness of the terrible hurt it causes.

The suicide rate for gay teen-agers is three to four times higher than for other youth.

The climate of hate is why Tom says going public is the right thing for him to do.

Will his activism make him even more of a target?

"From my standpoint, it can't get worse," he said.

Despite a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment in the Woodhaven district and many other districts, studies show that the average American high school student hears 25 anti-gay slurs every day.

The studies "point to a pernicious malady which has become a national crisis - the scourge of homophobia in our schools, and the violence and death which too often follow," said the Rev. Paul Beeman, president of the national board of directors of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

That group played a role in Tom coming to Woodhaven in the first place.

He began his stint as a foreign exchange student in Alabama, where his host family was headed by a physician in the town. His host parents, when they realized Tom was gay, decided he couldn't stay with them.

"They said it could hurt his business," Tom said. "They said I would have a very difficult time there."

The group sponsoring the student exchange program tried to find Tom a new host family.

"We heard about him through PFLAG," Michael Neubecker said.

He and his wife, Janice, are active and outspoken members of the Detroit/Downriver chapter of the group. They got involved after learning eight years ago that their son Lee, 27, was gay.

The Neubeckers made their decision to give Tom a home within seconds of hearing about his plight, they said.

"A day and a half later, he was here," Jan said.

They took Tom to see the high school he'd be attending, took him to their church (which he still attends) and to a group for gay teens at Affirmations Community Center in Ferndale.

It was the first time in his life Tom had met another gay person.

He has made friends from all over the metropolitan area through the Affirmations group.

"I do have friends in school, too - gay friends and straight friends," Tom said.

He is a good student and has found strong support from several teachers.

But when he wanted to start a chapter of Gay-Straight Alliance, a support group in hundreds of other schools, he couldn't find a teacher to serve as a sponsor.

On several occasions, Tom has been in classrooms when male teachers made anti-gay jokes or allowed students to do the same.

When teachers join in the "verbal gay bashing," it gives "students a green light to do more of the same," and things get worse, Mike said.

He and Jan addressed those instances, and Vogel has had the couple speak to the school's staff about harassment.

After some incidents, school administrators called in the parents of harassing teens and explained anti-discrimination laws.

Pupils who harass others because they are gay are "liable under the law and rightly so," Vogel said.

Sometimes an adult on the school's staff is assigned to keep an eye on Tom for his safety. But the guard can't watch him all the time.

Every time Tom is harassed and administrators are unable to take action because of a lack of reliable witnesses, "It makes other students afraid to come forward," Jan said.

"It frightens me," she added. "It makes it a very dangerous environment. Tom is supposed to be a guest in our country. We've really treated him well, haven't we?"

She and Mike want all of the parents in the district to know that the harassment goes on every day, and hope they will talk to their children about it.

"If we don't learn tolerance at school and the parents aren't involved, we'll never learn it," Mike said. "When people are so intolerant of others, it creates an atmosphere of violence.

"We're not talking about Tom doing anything other than being a student."

Tom has one advantage that many gay teens don't have - the support of his host parents.

"A lot of gay kids aren't 'out' to their parents, and get harassed at school, too," Mike said. "It's hell for gay teen-agers."

Tom is grateful for the Neubeckers' support, and his affection for them is obvious.

Despite what he suffers each day in school, he has "mixed emotions" about going back home to Switzerland, Tom said.

He plans to keep speaking out about gay rights, he added. His experience in school has made him believe that an end to discrimination and harassment is unlikely in the near future.

"Of course I have hope, but it might be a long way off," Tom said.

Affirmations Community Center can be contacted at 1-248-398-2950 or a help line can be reached at 1-800-398-4297. PFLAG can be reached by calling 1-734-783-2950.

Senior Staff Writer Paula Evans Neuman can be reached by e-mail at paula@heritage.com or by phone at 1-734-246-0865.

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This message has been distributed as a free informational service for the expressed interest of non-profit research and educational purposes only.

"The Actual or Perceived GLBT Student Protection Project"

A project of:
Coalition for Safer Schools of NYS

John Myers
Director of Operations and Programs
PO Box 2345
Malta, NY 12020
(518) 587-0176
Email:saratogany@aol.com

(To subscribe or unsubscribe the CSS-NYS E-mail List, send request to address above.)

From:SARATOGANY@aol.com
Date:Thu, 4 May 2000 14:37:12 EDT
Subject:Detroit Free Press:Another Article About Gay Exchange HS Student (he documents)

Message forward by:
The Coalition for Safer Schools of NYS
Email to:SARATOGANY@aol.com

CSS-NYS Note:In addition to "getting safe" and reporting incidents to building "principal" (has liable responsibilty) students should be keeping a documented incident log, with date, time, name of harasser(s) and witnesses (when possible) and of course the details of the incident. Report and document.

When students and parents do not get immediate satisfactory resolution from the building "principal" move on to the School district superintendent, the board of education and the school districts director of human resources.

Contact :
Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund
National Headquarters
120 Wall Street, Suite 1500
New York, NY 10005-3904
212-809-8585 phone
212-809-0055 fax

and the ACLU.
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Detroit Free Press, May 2, 2000
321 W. Lafayette Blvd., Detroit, MI, 48231
(Fax 313-222-6774 ) (E-MAIL:editpg@freepress.com )
( http://www.freep.com/ )

By Mei-Ling Hopgood, Free Press Staff Writer

Each week, Tom Sutter carefully records in a blue journal his encounters with intolerance at Woodhaven High School:

Tuesday, 11 January. While I was walking down to the music room I heard the word fag three times.

Monday, 24 January (2000). People called me "gay guy" in the hallway.

Wednesday, 2 February. Today in the hallway some kid elbowed me. In the drama class, this one kid first had his arm around my chair lean. Then he tried to put his hand on my legs.

The senior and exchange student from Switzerland keeps the journal in case he must discuss the incidents with school officials. It also reminds him that he could be in danger. Recently, Sutter found threatening notes by his locker.

"It's really difficult to go back to school every day," said Sutter, 17, who is openly gay. "Now, it's not just hate against gay people, but it's hate against me. And that scares me."

To help fight such harassment, the Michigan Alliance Against Hate Crimes is sponsoring a youth meeting May 17, during which a group of Michigan teenagers will plan a 3-year program to teach other young people how to fight hate in their schools and community.

Civil rights and youth activists say they continue to grapple with how to infiltrate the gray area between teenage jesting and harassment, and how to help some youths be more tolerant of others, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or other differences. At the same time, many say adults still aren't sure how to prevent young people from moving from intolerant ideas to violent action.

"How do we get to the kids who seem perfectly comfortable with the ideology of hatred?" said Susan Silk, a Southfield psychologist and member of the Michigan Alliance Against Hate Crimes. "Theoretically, we all say we are 'hands-on' and 'grassroots' programs.

"But none of us know how to figure out how to implement those in an effective way."

The youth conference is one answer to the problem. Civil rights groups and schools will choose the youths who will attend the conference, which is part of a larger conference on hate crimes in Grand Rapids.

"Kids listen to kids more than they listen to adults," said Ellery Diem, 16, a junior at Harrison High School in Farmington Hills. A member of the Anti-Defamation League's youth group, she will attend the May conference.

At Woodhaven High School, officials have tried to deal with Sutter's complaints, detaining and suspending a few students. Officials called some students' parents into the school. Teachers attend an awareness session on harassment and gays. A hall monitor often meets Sutter at his locker and follows him to class to try to catch the students who assault him.

But Sutter still complains of students hitting him and sexually harassing him when officials aren't looking. He wore headphones one week trying to block out the name-calling.

"A lot of students are accepting and tolerant of any group, and we have students who are not," said Woodhaven principal Michael Vogel. "I think no matter what you do or say to some of those students, they're not going to change their viewpoints. It's a very challenging aspect to any public figure's job, and not something you can just let go."

Sutter's host parents want the school to have an assembly condemning harassment and to send a letter home to parents. Officials do not plan to do that.

Antiviolence groups, psychologists and sociologists say hate can emerge in its most raw form among youths. Peer pressure is high. Emotions are more immediate. Anger and frustration more easily turn to rage. Immersed in a world colored by hormones and identity crises, differences can be exploited among groups of young people competing to fit in.

They are especially vulnerable to becoming victims or perpetrators, Silk said.

No dependable numbers are available on hate incidents and crimes among teenagers, civil rights groups say. Youths often don't report the incidents, or school officials try to deal with them internally. Michigan State Police, who admit to already inconsistent numbers for hate crimes due to variables in reporting among jurisdictions, do not divide the crimes into age groups.

But extreme cases make big news: Columbine High School. Michael [sic] Shepard, a gay college student killed in Wyoming. The first person to be convicted of ethnic intimidation in Michigan was 18.

As recently as two weeks ago, a Clio teenager and member of a hate group, Curt Clark, 17, pleaded guilty to planting a pipe bomb in a high school.

Schools are trying to promote tolerance. School districts, in areas such as West Bloomfield, Southfield and Detroit, organize large Martin Luther King Jr. celebrations and have diversity programs. Classes visit the Holocaust Memorial Center in West Bloomfield and the Museum of African-American History in Detroit. Police departments provide conflict-resolution training.

Generally, young people are often more open to differences and things such as interracial dating, diversity trainers say. But activists admit programs often don't change the students who feel most isolated, have strong prejudices or are set on bullying.

"We like to talk about deterrence and setting a tone that kids should know certain things may not be tolerated, but we have to recognize that some kids feed off of that," said Don Cohen, director of the Michigan Anti-Defamation League, which monitors hate group activity and gives diversity programs at schools. "They become more marginalized and more likely to revel in the ideology that they've concocted."

At the heart of the problem, Silk added, is the lack of resources for troubled or frustrated teenagers.

"I think the real problem is there are not outlets and not means of addressing the feelings of frustrations kids have in a timely, proactive way," she said.

But groups keep trying. The Anti-Defamation League is planning a fall conference on deterring young people from joining hate groups. The Triangle Foundation, a gay rights organization, is trying to get schools to put up an informational poster that scorns gay-bashing.

The Michigan Alliance Against Hate Crimes hopes the young people who attend its May conference will help construct a program that can help other teens fight back if white power flyers are passed out at their schools.

Then youths can stop classmates who might be picking on someone like Tom Sutter, offer support to the victims and reach out to the isolated. The hope is that young people, too, can answer pleas of people like Mike Neubecker, Sutter's host father in Brownstown Township.

"We not asking to change anyone's mind," he said. "We're asking for tolerance. We're asking that he can go to school and not be harassed."

For information on the Michigan Alliance Against Hate Crimes conference, call 517-373-0089, 8-5 weekdays.

· Contact MEI-LING HOPGOOD at 248-586-2621 or hopgood@freepress.com.
=====================================================================
This message has been distributed as a free informational service for the expressed interest of non-profit research and educational purposes only.

"The Actual or Perceived GLBT Student Protection Project"

A project of:
Coalition for Safer Schools of NYS

John Myers
Director of Operations and Programs
PO Box 2345
Malta, NY 12020
(518) 587-0176
Email:saratogany@aol.com

(To subscribe or unsubscribe the CSS-NYS E-mail List, send request to address above.)

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