Opinion

We’ve failed gay students

Time for society to ante up

By Marshall Dury

Posted on Sept. 18, 2003, at 12:00 a.m.

The Harvey Milk High School in New York is like no other place for secondary education in America. Their music, English and foreign language classes are just like the ones you and I had. Why is this high school so different, you ask? All of the students are gay.

I thought the United States had surely outgrown its early historical tendencies to separate people by race, color, sex and religion. I’m not claiming that I feel like I am being discriminated against because I am a heterosexual – certainly not. From a person who went to an all-male high school, I can tell you firsthand that there are still educational institutions that separate young people by sex.

Is the all-gay high school giving students a haven? Certainly, and I would have it no other way. Should it be necessary for gay students to seek this type high school education? I would have to say no – here’s why.

Harvey Milk’s student enrollment has grown to 100 students this year, tripling from previous years, and is hoping to foster a mutually accepting environment in which students will not be taunted or threatened. This argument works, but not for too long. Why wasn’t public school good enough? Because they were ostracized and excluded from normal high school activities and given a gay “Scarlet Letter” of sorts.

The high school’s mission statement reads, “[Harvey Milk High School] offers gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth an opportunity to obtain a secondary education in a safe and supportive environment.” I blame society for failing these kids.

In a country where you can decode human genomes and put chimpanzees in space, it is sad to think that our moral code of being mutually human to each other cannot cross the barrier of sexual-preference. The school is wrong in its assumption of doing these kids a great service for long-term benefits. Surely providing any student with a safe environment to earn their high school diploma is noble and beneficial. The problem with this process is the possibility for some of its students to graduate and have a false sense of their acceptance or security in the world after they get their diploma.

It can be argued that these students do know about the “real world” of being gay – being driven to a non-traditional high school. Surely being made fun of because of whom you date is something that surely breaks down the confidence and self-esteem of any teenager.

Consequently, homosexual students transferred to Harvey Milk High School because they would not be ridiculed and berated for their sexual orientation – that is a problem. Public and private high schools should be fostering communities that accept people no matter who they are and where they’ve been.

This high school is curbing a problem that will only grow worse with time. What if all gay students decided that they didn’t feel safe in their current high schools? What then? That will never happen, but it’s worth wondering to understand how the smaller question can turn into a larger problem. How are the most important years of a person’s self discovery going to be altered in a setting that does not give a person the day-to-day stresses of being gay?

Part of me feels like this high school is a step backwards. With good intentions, the Harvey Milk High School has smoke-screened the real problem and by no fault of their own, given these young people a lifestyle that they may not be able to continue after high school. If anything, this high school is a statement about our culture. It’s sad to think a percentage of homosexual teenagers are being forced to seek different settings for their education only because we, as a collective group, failed them.

Marshall Dury is a senior English major.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 18th, 2003, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.