The other day I posted concerning the Time Magazine story on the murder of 15 year old Lawrence King wherein the author, John Cloud, made it sound like most gay middle and high school students breeze on through school with few issues and minimal harrassment. Life according to Cloud for gay students borders on sweetness and light. In the process Mr. Cloud cited statistics from various studies. I was so disgusted with Cloud's misrepresentation of the true reality for LGBT students that I sent a letter to the editor of Time Magazine. Now GLSEN is reponding to Cloud's inaccuracies as reported in the Washington Blade (http://www.washingtonblade.com/blog/index.cfm?blog_id=16739). Time needs to correct the inaccurate picture depicted by Mr. Cloud. Here are some highlights of GLSEN responses (in bold face) to Cloud's story:
According to another GLSEN survey released the same year (actually the next year, though they both are called 2005 reports) only 18% of gay and transgender students said they had ever been assaulted because of their sexual orientation (only 12% - probably many of the same kids - said they had been assaulted because of the way they express their gender).
Yes, 18% of LGBT students reported being physically assaulted in school in the past year because of their sexual orientation. As a researcher, I find this statistic an extremely serious indicator of school climate for this population. First, it is about recent experiences, those experienced in the past school year. Second, the type of victimization this includes is quite severe: being punched, kicked or injured with a weapon. The fact that one in five LGBT students had experienced this severe type of victimization in the past year is staggering. Remember, Lawrence King was injured and then killed with a weapon.
And of those who had been harassed or assaulted, more than one-fifth - 22% - said the incident wasn't serious enough to report.
This is a misrepresentation of the findings. First of all, the 22% is of a subset of those students who chose not to report the harassment to school personnel (60%). Thus, of all students, only about 1 in 10 who experienced harassment said that it was not serious enough to report (that’s 60% of 22% equaling 13%). The author fails to point out that the larger number of students who did not report harassment said that they believed that the school staff would not do anything about it (32%) or that a similar percentage to the one he reported was of students who said they feared negative repercussions for reporting their victimization (18%). That is a much less rosy picture of high school.
What the author is referring to is the percentage of students who report that reporting the incident(s) to school staff was not at all effective. In addition, another quarter of students said that it was somewhat ineffective. Thus, less than half (43%) of students said that telling school personnel when they were harassed or assaulted made a difference. Less than half.
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