After strings of bullying episodes made national headlines in 2010, the Gay-Straight Alliance at Baker University decided it wanted to make a difference in the community.
GSA members are in contact with students and faculty from Baldwin High School with the hopes of helping start a GSA program at the school and providing safe-space training for faculty members.
“We are just trying to see what difference we can make in our community,” GSA adviser Matthew Potterton said. “It is a terrible thing for bullying to still be happening, and we decided that it was our mission to see what we can do at the high school level.”
The members of GSA are in the beginning stages of building contacts within the Baldwin school district.
“We still haven’t really had a whole lot of contact,” GSA President Joylin Hall said. “But we want to meet with the faculty and see what kind of needs they feel that they have, because we don’t really know the environment that much yet.”
Sophomore Anna Richards, a Baldwin High School alumna, said bullying was not a problem when she was in high school, but there were also no openly gay or transsexual students attending the school. However, Richards said teachers with safe-space training could definitely benefit the school if there are students who feel they don’t have anyone to talk to about these issues.
“Safe-space training is an educational process about (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) issues,” Hall said.
If GSA has the opportunity to conduct a safe-space training program with the faculty of Baldwin High School, it would address how to be sensitive to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, how to be a good listener and what to do if a student wants to discuss their sexuality with a teacher.
“So, really it is just a way to identify yourself as being somebody who is safe to come to and understands and supports the (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community,” Hall said.
GSA’s main goal during this project is to be a support system to Baldwin High School in any way possible.
“I don’t exactly know what we can do to help, but we want to make sure that we are supportive in getting this going,” Potterton said. “And anything that we can do to help them, we want to do.”
Potterton said working with the high school is just one element of what they hope to do. The organization is also trying to educate and raise awareness within the Baldwin City community of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues.
