School Bullying Council

By
Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 7:59 AM on 27th July 2011

Uncomfortable reading: Republican rep Michele Bachmann is very vocal on anti-gay issues including gay marriage and that public schools shouldn’t be forced to start teaching it

Over the past two years nine young people have committed suicide in Michele Bachmann’s backyard – or at least the Minnesota school districts she represents.

Many more have attempted to take their own lives leading state public health officials to slap a ‘suicide contagion area’ label on the region because of the high levels.

At least four of those who committed suicide were openly gay or, at least, perceived to be gay by classmates, and many were reportedly bullied. 

While it is impossible to prove why these youngsters took their own lives, some critics are suggesting a link between the suicides and the anti-gay rhetoric sweeping through school districts in the state.

The news may be uncomfortable for Bachmann who has a number of anti-gay policies.

Michele Johnson, whose 13-year-old daughter Samantha was one of the first students in the Anoka-Hennepin district to commit suicide in 2009, says she now wishes she’d never moved to the area.

‘I feel if I hadn’t moved to this district my daughter wouldn’t have died,’ Ms Johnson told Mother Jones.

She believes her daughter had been heavily bullied at then Fred Moore Middle School, in Ramsey, Minnesota, for her short hair, her clothes and her weight.

The bullies thought Samantha had been
a lesbian, Ms Johnson said. But despite being heavily
involved in setting up a gay rights group at the school, she doesn’t
believe that to be true.

Her daughter did seek refuge with other students who were gay though, most likely because they were getting bullied as well.

Not that Ms Johnson knew about the bullying until after her daughter’s death when the girl’s friends told her.

They claimed Samantha had been
relentlessly targeted by certain girls on her volleyball team. She had
dropped out but the coach had never contacted Ms Johnson.

The friends also claimed at least one school staff member witnessed the bullying but did nothing.

Loss: Samantha Johnson, left, was one of the first students in the Anoka-Hennepin district to commit suicide in 2009, while 15-year-old Justin Aaberg, right, hanged himself in his bedroom last year

Pact: Minnesota school girls from a different district, Haylee Fentress, left, and Paige Moravetz, right, carried out a suicide pact in April because they said they were being bullied

‘If I had known, I would have pulled her out of that school so quick,’ her mother said.

Last July, weeks after finishing his freshman year at Anoka High School, Justin Aaberg hanged himself in his bedroom.

He had been bullied because of his sexual orientation, according to his family.

Since his death at just 15, Justin’s
mother Tammy has been spoken publicly about the worry she had for her son’s
safety as an openly gay teen and battled to get the school district to
change its thinking on anti-gay bullying.

She said last year the situation had got a bit better but there was still a way to go.

Tragic: The latest case in the district was of 14-year-old Jordan Yenor who killed himself in May prompting school officials to look at additional resources to help students

‘Most of the teachers and principals, and maybe even now the
superintendent, they mean well – they want to intervene. But
the teachers still don’t know what they can and can’t do.’

The latest suicide in the Anoka-Hennepin district was in May. Fourteen-year-old Jordan Yenor’s death has prompted school officials to look at additional resources to help students.

Anoka-Hennepin is certainly not alone; there have been teen suicides in other school districts, which are not represented by Bachmann.

Fourteen-year-old Marshal County schoolgirls Haylee Fentress and Paige Moravetz made a suicide pact because they said they were being bullied.

The girls, best friends who even had hyphenated both their last names, hanged themselves in April.

Back in March 18-year-old Lance Lundsten, a Jefferson High School student who was openly gay on his Facebook page, took an overdose and later died in hospital.

On a Facebook memorial page Lance’s friends had written that he had been bullied at school for his sexual orientation.

Anoka-Hennepin is currently under federal investigation for infringing civil rights because it refused to add lessons promoting homosexuality to the curriculum.

Several
LGBT students are also suing the district claiming to have been ignored by
staff after complaining of being harassed physically and verbally for
long periods of time.

One
of the plaintiffs dropped out of school, later attempting suicide while
another claims to have been called a ‘faggot’ in the hallway while a
teacher who witnessed the attack did nothing, according to the suit.

One of the lawyers working on the suit Sam Wolfe, told Mother Jones: ‘The
district has serious problems. They’ve been reluctant to really address
the nature of the problem.’

Before the federal government stepped in, the district adopted a policy that all but wiped homosexuality from the curriculum, according to the website.

Waste: Lance Lundsten, a Jefferson High School student, left,  who was openly gay on his Facebook page, took an overdose and later died in hospital in March, while Thomas John ‘TJ’ Hayes, right, committed suicide in 2009

School employees could not teach that homosexuality was a ‘normal, valid lifestyle.’ The policy was later changed to require staff to remain neutral on the subject, but only if it should come up in class.

Both policies were influenced by two religious groups – and big Bachmann supporters -  the Minnesota Family Council (MFC) and The Parents Action League, which also lobbied to put discredited ‘reparative therapy’ materials into schools, according to the website.

Daniel J Reidenberg, executive director of Minnesota-based Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (SAVE), told MailOnline that while connecting Bachmann with the deaths was probably largely a result of media impact ‘her views and statements are not helpful, that is for sure.’

‘..for youth who are dealing with orientation issues and identity/development issues, when they hear or read things from others that are contrary to what they are thinking, feeling, living, it does cause them added stress,’ he added.

Memorial: Aaron Jurek, a student at Blaine High School, lost his battle with undiagnosed depression in November 2009

‘Having a celebrity or a public figure say/do things as publicly (or privately) as say for example she’s done, if that were to be heard by a LGBTQ youth who is particularly vulnerable or at risk, could add to their distress.’

While the bullying runs on in schools, outside relations between anti-gay and pro-gay groups are decidedly frosty.

The MFC, of which Bachmann has very close ties, has waged war on gay marriage, wanting a constitutional amendment on the state ballot in 2012.

Bachmann has been very vocal about the issue and has linked it to schools. In 2004 she addressed a rally: ‘In our
public schools, whether they want to or not, they’ll be forced to start
teaching that same-sex marriage is equal, that it is normal and that
children should try it.’

The Republican has also spoken out against an anti-bullying bill, telling Minnesota state legislature in 2006 that it would a waste of time.

‘I think for all of us, our experience in public schools is there have always been bullies,’ she said at the time. ‘Always have been, always will be.

‘I just don’t know how we’re ever going to get to the point of zero tolerance. What does it mean. Will we be expecting boys to be girls?’

Justin Aaberg’s mother Tammy continues to lobby public officials urging them to pass legislation that would make schools safer.

While Senators Al Franken and Keith Ellison, both Minnesota Democrats, have been supportive, Ms Aaberg claims Bachmann has not responded to a request for a meeting with her.

She would certainly welcome legislation even though it would be too late for her own son and the other victims of the district and surrounding districts.

• For confidential support call the Samaritans on 08457 90 90 90 or visit a local Samaritans branch, see www.samaritans.org for details.
• In the U.S. call the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255

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Editor’s note: For more on this story, watch AC360 tonight at 10 p.m. ET on CNN. For a full investigation into the Anoka-Hennepin student suicides, watch “CNN Presents” on Sunday, July 24, at 8 p.m. ET.

(CNN) — Federal authorities are investigating “incidents involving harassment and bullying” in Minnesota’s largest school district, the U.S. Department of Justice confirmed in an email to CNN.

The civil rights investigation is currently underway in the suburban Minneapolis school district, Anoka-Hennepin, a community already embattled in a culture war over homosexuality in the classroom.

The Justice Department together with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights are looking into “allegations of harassment and discrimination in the Anoka-Hennepin School District based on sex, including peer-on-peer harassment based on not conforming to gender stereotypes,” according to a district memo provided exclusively to CNN.

The party filing the complaint was not named due to privacy concerns.

Read the district’s memo

The district said the joint investigation included interviews with staff members by federal authorities.

“The Department is committed to investigating allegations to determine whether there are violations of federal civil rights laws and will use the enforcement tools at our disposal to protect the safety of students,” wrote a Justice Department spokeswoman in an email to CNN.

The federal investigation comes after a string of seven student suicides in less than two years, which stirred public debate over the district’s sexual orientation curriculum policy.

Parents and friends say four of those students were either gay, perceived to be gay or questioning their sexuality, and they say, at least two of them were bullied over their sexuality.

It’s unclear whether the suicides or the policy are a significant part of the federal investigation. The controversial policy, adopted in 2009, states that staff must “remain neutral on matters regarding sexual orientation” and that “such matters are best addressed within individual family homes, churches, or community organizations.”

Read the school’s sexual orientation curriculum policy

Anoka-Hennepin is the only Minnesota school district known to have such a policy. However, at least eight other states — Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Utah — have statutes specifying varying limits on classroom instruction regarding homosexuality. Tennessee considered similar legislation this year.

Community supporters of the so-called neutrality policy say it is consistent with the Minnesota Human Rights Act, which protects rights based on sexual orientation but states that nothing in the law shall be construed to “authorize or permit the promotion of homosexuality or bisexuality in education institutions.”

Gay rights advocates who oppose Anoka-Hennepin’s neutrality policy say that the school district has misinterpreted the intention of the state’s human rights law.

In May, two advocacy groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, threatened the school district with a federal lawsuit challenging the policy. So far, negotiations with the school district have not met their demands.

The head of the Anoka-Hennepin school district said the policy reflects a community divided over homosexuality.

“It’s a diverse community,” said Anoka-Hennepin Superintendent Dennis Carlson, “and what we’re trying to do, what I’m trying to do as a superintendent is walk down the middle of the road.”

Tammy Aaberg — whose 15-year-old son, Justin, committed suicide last July — has become an outspoken critic of the neutrality policy.

“He came to me and said, ‘Mom, a kid at school says I’m going to go to hell because I’m gay,’” said Aaberg.

The neutrality policy, she said, contributed to a school environment harmful to her son, who was outed in the eighth grade by another student.

“I believe that the climate that they have in the school, the way that kids are allowed to treat other kids — they say ‘fag’ all the time,” Aaberg said. “If you’re even questioning who you are and you’re not seeing anybody who’s like you, you don’t see anything positive about who you are, then you start wondering, ‘What’s wrong with me?’”

The district — which has a separate and comprehensive bullying prohibition policy — has continually denied any connection between bullying and the suicides.

“It’s really difficult to say that with any suicide, this instance or that instance caused a suicide,” Carlson said. “We have no evidence that bullying or harassment took place in any of those cases.”

The superintendent also emphasized the importance of students reporting bullying, and he acknowledged “gay students in our district struggle with bullying and harassment on a daily basis.”

Sam Wolfe, the Southern Poverty Law Center attorney handling the advocacy group’s case, calls the curriculum policy a “gag policy.” In May, Wolfe wrote a letter to Carlson stating that students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and those perceived to be LGBT “remain in jeopardy in a hostile and alienating environment.”

“The gag policy singles out LGBT students by denying them and them alone any affirmation of their identity,” Wolfe wrote in the May 24 letter.

He also said the policy “categorically preclud[es] any meaningful classroom discussion about history, literature, current events, or any other relevant lessons involving LGBT people.”

In response to those allegations, the school district wrote a letter to the SPLC, stating the district “strongly disagrees” that there is a link between the harassment of LGBT students and the neutrality policy.

The district’s letter also disputes that the policy prohibits classroom discussion of LGBT issues, but states rather that it prevents teachers from injecting their personal beliefs on homosexuality in the classroom.

Some teachers in Anoka-Hennepin school district say the neutrality policy is difficult to implement.

“Neutrality is tricky to understand,” said Julie Blaha, the president of Anoka-Hennepin’s teachers’ union. “We have to clarify — is neutrality silence? Is neutrality balance? Is neutrality purely factual? Is neutrality showing both sides?

“When people say they like neutrality I think what they’re saying is they like the idea of fairness,” Blaha said, “And I think we all agree with that, the idea that everyone feels safe, everyone feels welcome in our classrooms; however, when you look at the policy, I’m not sure that’s what the policy is saying. And that’s the problem, we’re not sure what exactly this policy says.”

Superintendent Carlson said the school board has no plan to change the neutrality policy. The Department of Justice did not comment on whether its investigation will determine if the policy is compliant with federal law.

A similar federal investigation in Tehachapi, California, led to federally-mandated revisions of the Tehachapi Unified School District’s policies.

California gov. OKs bill to teach gay history

After investigating a complaint surrounding the suicide of a 13-year-old student, the Departments of Justice and Education concluded the eighth grader “suffered sexual and gender-based harassment by his peers, including harassment based on his non-conformity to gender stereotypes” and the school district “did not adequately investigate or respond appropriately as it is required to do by federal law,” according to the resolution agreement reached this month between the Tehachapi Unified School District and the federal agencies.

Tehachapi district officials disagreed with the investigation’s findings.

– CNN’s Mila Mimica contributed to this report.

Watch Anderson Cooper 360° weeknights 10pm ET. For the latest from AC360° click here.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/07/20/minnesota.school.civil.rights.probe/