By Mel Mazuc, executive editor
Michelle Rodgers was 10 minutes into her junior year, and she was walking down the hall with a friend. They were talking casually amongst themselves, and, out of nowhere, a boy screamed, “Dyke!” In her direction. Shocked, she laughed and looked at her friend. “Seriously?” she said, but it’s no joke.
“It ruined the rest of my day,” Rodgers, who is a lesbian and is now a senior, said. “I was confused. I had never faced much discrimination at Kaneland, never to my face. It was discouraging, not how I thought I’d spend my first day as an upperclassman.”
Graphics teacher Nikki Larsen, who worked at a more diverse school, DeKalb, said Kaneland students tend to be less sensitive.
“It’s just that students don’t realize that they’re being prejudiced; it’s not all [of them.] I’m not saying Kaneland’s a racist school, but there are subtle things that could be construed that way. We’re culturally insensitive sometimes. It’s not overall; it’s just that little undertone of not thinking before you’re speaking,” Larsen said.
“It seems acceptable, but it comes from a derogatory place.” Things slipped by here, but other schools immediately addressed them, Larsen said. “When kids say that’s ‘gay’ or ‘retarded,’ it doesn’t seem wrong, but when you think about where it comes from, it’s really wrong,” she said.
Kaneland doesn’t have a lot of diversity, John Markovich, psychologist, said. “We’re far less diverse than we’d probably like to be.”
Gay-Straight Alliance adviser Sharon Beck said being less diverse makes it hard to accept others.
“We just haven’t lived it,” she said. “We don’t see the diversity; a lot of kids encounter it for the first time in college.”
Senior Jemmar Parrenas, who is Korean and Filipino, said he doesn’t usually experience discrimination.
“It’s jokingly, mainly by my friends. I really don’t mind unless they’re trying to make fun of me. I just laugh it off and make fun of them,” he said.
Some stereotypes Parrenas receives for being Asian include “all Asians looking alike and that Asians are bad drivers. Kids will say, ‘Hey, Jemmar, is that your cousin over there?’ The kid ends up being Chinese,” he said.
Reasons for discriminating are different for different kids, Markovich said. Some may do it because it’s what they’ve seen or grown up in. They might have a parent who’s hard on them, or they may have poor self-esteem.
“[Discriminating] gives them laughs; they get negative attention,” Markovich said. Rodgers thinks that some teens are insensitive because they don’t understand diversity.
“When you don’t understand something, it becomes threatening,” she said.
When GSA started last year, the club put up posters, which were “immediately ripped down,” Beck said.
“I was surprised at how quickly they were ripped down. [When people heard about GSA,] almost immediately there were parent calls to me, to the superintendent. Some students are not allowed to attend [GSA’s] meetings.”
Common targets are people who are different than the general ‘norm,’ and who are less likely to defend themselves, Markovich said.
“No bully picks a target that picks back.”
Being a bully has consequences. Markovich said long-term implications could be disciplinary action, or having harassment filed against them. It could even cause legal problems, and it gives people a bad reputation with the authorities. It can even lead to self-esteem problems, because bullies push the people around them away. Bullies treat others differently for their own self-confidence, junior Andie Strang said.
“They’re so set on how they are that differences intimidate them.”
Effects on teens who are discriminated against could be feelings of vulnerability, a desire to avoid places where they’re getting attacked, and lowered self-esteem because attention is being called to them in a negative way, Markovich said.
“It could lead to depression or social anxiety. Generally, discriminated kids have low self-esteem and maybe a decreased trust in administration or community organizations that aren’t doing anything to stop it,” he said.
Signs that someone is being discriminated against are unique to each person. Students who withdraw but are normally good, happy students, students who have a decline in grades, a desire to stay home from school or avoidance of situations where they might be attacked could all be signs, Markovich said. Improvements students could make to be more sensitive could be “recognizing when joking turns into hurting someone else,” Markovich said.
“Students should definitely say something [if they see someone getting bullied.] We tend to forget about how the student getting bullied is feeling. You chuckle, and you look the other way.”
Larsen said students are influenced by their peers unless they think before speaking.
“Even if you say [something insensitive,] recognize that you say it. Remember that everybody is a person and has feelings,” she said.
“People disagree with homosexuality, and I don’t mind that one bit,” Rodgers said.
“I respect those beliefs wholeheartedly, and I don’t expect the world to change how they think for me, [but] I don’t look at you differently for whoever you are. It doesn’t do you, or the person you’re harassing, any good to berate them. Just let it be. I am human, too.”