Travis Shaw was raised in a
family where it was OK for him to be gay.
But his sexuality prompted an entirely different reaction from students at his Prince George high school.
"I showed up to my locker and there were bullets taped to [it] with a note saying, 'The next ones are for you,'" said Shaw, who recently campaigned for a seat on Prince George city council.
"I was thrown down the stairs at PGSS at least six times in the first year I was there. Being spit at in the face was something I got used to. Those were things I had to deal with on a daily basis."
Shaw says schools should not tolerate that kind of behaviour.
He was among a group of about a dozen students, teachers and parents who made a public plea at Tuesday's School District 57 board meeting for a policy to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender youth from discrimination.
"Now, with social media, kids are getting away with what they want, saying what they want to say... it's more than anybody should go through in an entire lifetime," he said.
During his time as a student, Shaw survived physical assault, shunning and humiliation. His boyfriend wasn't quite so lucky.
According to Shaw, when the boy told his mother he was gay, she responded by telling him he might as well be dead, because that would be easier to accept than having a gay son. A week before Shaw's graduation, that teen killed himself.
"Dealing with this when I was 18 is an example of [why trustees] and the whole district needs to have a policy in place to help protect these students," said Shaw.
College Heights and Kelly Road secondary schools have gay-straight alliances. PGSS teacher Susan Trabant said some students will not attend the meetings at any school for fear of reprisals.
"We're getting the resistance because the kids are terrified to be 'out' in school, and, if they come to a GSA, whether they're gay or straight, they will get pegged and targeted," said Trabant, social justice chair for Prince George Teachers Association.
Prince George secondary school phys-ed teacher Greg Laing, who is gay, organized the first
gay-straight alliance in a local school eight years ago while a teacher at Lakewood junior secondary.
Laing meets with PGSS
students Wednesdays from 3:45 to 6 p.m., and hears of the fear and intimidation some students deal with.
"I'm OK with kids making comments towards me, I can deal with that, but I never let it go by without telling them why they should not be making those
remarks," said Laing.
"But for the kids having to deal with it, it's much more difficult for them to deal with and I get very angry about it."
He said a district-wide policy to protect students would also help teachers and school staff react to homophobic abuse.
"A policy alone is not enough, then we need training for
everyone on how to deal with this issue," said Laing.
"Teachers often ignore it because they don't know how to deal with it to understand what we go through every single day."
Laing also hopes PGSS will provide a safe haven for the gay-straight alliance by opening a classroom for them.
In 2006, then-Education Minister Shirley Bond mandated all school districts adopt
anti-homophobic policies.
Now 15 such policies exist in B.C. Trabant provided the board copies of some of those existing policies, which could be used as a template for the local school district.
The policy proposal is now in the hands of the district's policy and governance committee and board chair Sharel Warrington is confident the trustees will soon have anti-homophobic guidelines in place.
"They were very positive in their approach to getting their message out there and we will do what we can to support them," said Warrington.
"At the school level they have to endure some significant
bullying and discrimination and it's unjustified.
"We don't need that kind of behaviour in our schools."
