School Districts Hamper LGBTQ High School Day at U
The University of Utah’s third annual LGBTQ High School Conference on Saturday, Jan. 12 drew only one student – and organizers at the school’s LGBT Resource Center say the nearly non-existent turn-out is the fault of school censorship.
As with last year, Resource Center staff distributed information packets about the day, designed to give queer high school students information about school services and student life, to school guidance counselors. To add what Resource Center director Cathy Martinez called “credibility” to the conference, they enlisted the help of Dan Cairo from the university’s High School Recruitment Center.
But as with last year, the conference received some resistance from local high school districts. In an email obtained by The Daily Utah Chronicle, the university’s student newspaper, Jordan School District secondary guidance specialist Christen Richards-Khong instructed the district’s counselors not to distribute information about the day.
She wrote: “No posting of information will be provided by the school … No announcements will be provided by the school … No transportation will be provided by the school.”
If students still requested information, Richards-Khong said that counselors would need to first contact their parents and explain “the specific content of the information materials.”
This is similar to the situation in which organizers found themselves last year, when Jordan School District administrators actively blocked guidance counselors from distributing the information. According to Resource Center staff, Jamie Vargas, a counselor at Jordan High School, told them he wanted to participate in last year’s day until he received a similar email from district administrators.
Melinda Colton, director of communications for Jordan School District, told the Daily Chronicle that parental permission was necessary for off campus events, because the district has responsibility to the minors who attend its schools.
She added that the controversial nature of the day, which included a workshop titled “Dating and Relationships,” made administrators wary. She also said they were reluctant to circulate the information because of rumors that college students give high school students condoms and sexual advice at high school recruitment days.
Martinez said these rumors are absolutely untrue.
“We don’t give out condoms and we don’t give out sex information,” she said. “It is not part of what we do. It would’ve been nice if they’d called to confirm that.”
In preparing materials for the day, LGBT Resource Center intern Bonnie Owens, a senior in the University of Utah’s Gender Studies Program, said she used the permission slip and conference materials from the Asian Student Union’s recruitment day, just as she had done for last year’s conference. In modifying the permission slip, she merely took out language specific to Asian students. But instead of including notice that this was a conference specifically for gay and transgender students, she said she chose to refer to the event as a generic “high school conference.”
“I was trying to make it as evident as possible where students would be and what they’d be learning. There’s nothing that’s in the permission slip that is a lie,” she said.
She added that she didn’t specify that this was an LGBT conference because a many high school students are not able to be out to their parents or guardians.
“The reality is if we put that on there, a lot of students won’t want to take the slip home to their parents who might do God knows what to do them,” she said. “It was a deliberate move, but not a devious move.” The permission slip for the conference is available on the LGBT Resource Center’s Web site at sa.utah.edu/lgbt/forms/highSchoolConference.html.
Coulton told the Daily Utah Chronicle that the Jordan School District rejected the forms, anyway. She said the event’s ties to sexuality required officials to tell parents about its content.
Martinez also said that nothing about the conference, from its permission slips to its Saturday schedule, was an attempt to “go behind parents’ backs.”
“Doing it on a Saturday was a way to prevent having students leave school,” she said. “It was by no means to divert from their parents knowing they were coming up here.”
Although the day drew only one student from Salt Lake Community College, Martinez said she does not consider the day a “failure.”
“I see it as potentially promising, based on the fact we haven’t had any show up in the past two years,” she said.
Martinez added that for next year’s conference, she and her staff might consider a few different tactics, such as advertising the date several months in advance.
“It’s kind of a trial and error but we’re very invested in having LGBTQ students and their friends and allies attend the university and to have their parents involved, too, if that’s a place where the student is out to their parents.”