Spring Break
Local high school students advocate for LGBT rights
Haley Swenson
Issue date: 11/7/07 Section: News/Features
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The group of current and former Metropolitan Nashville high school students have formed a coalition with help from the LGBT Project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee to convince the Metro Nashville Public School system to rewrite its non-discrimination policy. The revision would include protection for those discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation, as well as gender identity, appearance and expression - of which only sexual orientation is included in Vanderbilt's own non-discrimination policy.
The students' approach to making this change in their schools has been multi-faceted and adaptive and started with an effort to build a reliable coalition of supporters. They have sought support from the Tennessee Department of Health's youth council, the Youth Mayor's Council and from individual members of the school board.
In their efforts thus far they have emphasized that both Knoxville and Memphis public schools have such a policy already, and their chief concern is with the psychological and physical well-being of Nashville students. The students have found partners in the Oasis Center, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Tennessee, The Child and Family Policy Center at the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies and One-In-Teen Youth Services.
The student-activists are members of the gay-straight alliance at Hume-Fogg High School, and have hosted a number of programs and events in the past, but have recently seen the need for inciting this institutional change. According to the students, Hume-Fogg's gay-straight alliance boasts almost 50 members and hopes to continue to involve students from other local high schools in their campaign as well.
"A very small percentage (of students at Hume-Fogg) are actively against (the policy change) ... It's been really well received by Hume-Fogg, so I guess the next step is to get it spread through other schools," said Evie Farnsworth, a senior at Hume-Fogg involved in the efforts to change the policy.
Former public-school students in Davidson County can participate in an online survey at www.supportstudentsafety.com/survey, which the group is using to collect information about the atmosphere at the schools without this non-discrimination policy.
On the Web site, they share some of the comments people have submitted through the survey.
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