A 15-year-old activist in Arizona notified officials at every school in the state that bullying of lesbian and gay students must end, or they will face a lawsuit.
Caleb Laieski sent a letter via email to over 5,000 school administrators, city council members and lawmakers for the state demanding better strategies to combat discrimination, according to AZCentral.com.
In early December 2010, Laieski sent the letters stating that LGBT youth experience more bullying than their heterosexual peers, and offered a reference list of organizations and experts to officials. The letters also alerted school officials that policies expressly banning harassment of gays and lesbians by students, teachers and administrators must be put in place, and enforced, or they will face "legal ramifications."
"This is more not to threaten a lawsuit but to put resources out there," said Laieski. "But if they don't want to cooperate, there's going to be consequences."
Laieski has experience as an activist since founding Gays and Lesbians United Against Discrimination two years ago, when he was just 13. The organization was formed to help support the LGBT community locally and nationally, "because of the amount of discrimination, hate speech, and experience of a friend committing suicide and many others attempting to work from a legislative perspective to deter or prevent these issues by passing legislation to patch these issues." He added that "after more interaction, experience, and involvement, I learned that we need to focus on the more basic issue that kept these statistics of suicide, homelessness, rejection, drug and alcohol use, etc. [so high]."
At the time of the organization's founding, Laieski successfully spurred a change in his school district's policy, which brought national media attention to the group.
Laieski, a former Willow Canyon High School student, was shoved into lockers and received text messages filled with anti-gay slurs, and he said he felt officials in the district should have done more to end it.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona offered to represent Laieski in a possible suite against Dysart Unified School District. The student handbook was later revised by the district with language banning bullying of LGBT students. "Overall, I think they did a great job in adding the protections and a better job enforcing," Laieski said. He is pursuing his high-school-equivalency diploma and plans to attend community college. "Obviously, there's always room for improvement."
Laieski said he felt the need to reach out to all the schools in Arizona after talking to his friends in other school districts. His organization is operated mainly by himself and his friend, Casey Cameron, 35, who lives in Chicago. Their hopes for the group, other than policy changes, include goals to provide services for lesbian and gay youth, including counselors and a homeless shelter.
The group is "absolutely" ready to file lawsuits in certain situations such as a suicide or attempted suicide because of bullying, any kind of hate by teachers or administrators, and insufficient punishment for any act of bullying. In Laieski's experience, administrators frequently fail to punish bullies as recommended in school handbooks.
"They say, 'Oh, we talked to him. It shouldn't happen again,' " he explained. "It's obviously going to become adequate if they at least follow the rule book, and depending on the degree, we can go from there."
The letter campaign by Laieski has prompted responses from only a few officials, including two Phoenix-area districts. Most recipients acknowledged they got the letter, but did not mention any plans to take steps to protect against bullying in the future.
One main priority for GLUAD is to make sure school districts address sexual orientation specifically in policies regarding bullying. Many districts get their policies and language from recommendations by the Arizona School Boards Association. Juliet Martin, a spokewoman for the association, said that bullying based on sexual orientation is not specifically mentioned in model policies. "Principals are using the language that's in there, which certainly is inclusive of anti-gay (behavior) just as it is of race or religion or anything else," Martin said. "Bullying is bullying, and they're dealing with it in all shapes and forms."
According to Martin, the association has plans provide districts with around a dozen new policy advisories this month. She said that revisions to language about bullying would be included, but did not say whether or not bullying of lesbians and gays would be specifically mentioned in those revisions.
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