Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
cause it is not safe or they are worried about being beat up, just because it's not
Rockport, it's a conservative place.
Our evidence did not support Mike's (AD) belief that Rockport is a safe place for
young people who identify as gay.
Mary (FR) described a student of color who came out as gay to which not all of the
faculty were responsive. Mary (FR) explained:
We have an African American kid who's come out as gay and he wrote this little
thing up about “I'm queer and I'm here” and nobody reacted.… Kids have been
mean to him.… He put this thing in every faculty member's mailbox… I mean,
everyoneknewhewasgay,nobodycouldcareless.…But[oneoftheoldermale
faculty members] loudly and publicly—of course he is deaf so he's speaks really
loudly—he got this thing in his mailbox and he's the only person on campus that
didn't know he's gay—he said, “He's black and queer?” He was saying, “Oh it
must be really hard for him around here to be black
and
queer.”
Jill(FR)added,“[Hegaveus]apacketofreadingmaterialforfacultytoreadthrough,
for awareness.… [Faculty] never discussed it. We never brought it up at our faculty
[meeting]. You know, good for him but whatever.” Though the student tried to build
awareness among the faculty with a packet of reading material, the faculty research-
ers explained that his effort was met with little reaction. While on the one hand it was
positive that many of the teachers were neither surprised nor cared about the student's
sexual identity, by not properly acknowledging the presence of homosexuality in the in-
stitution—in faculty meetings or in the classroom—they were helping to silence (make
invisible) his and others' unique, often difficult experiences within the Rockport com-
munity.
Sara (FR) told us a story about the resistance of some faculty to discussing homo-
sexuality as part of the science curriculum:
We meet once a month with the lower school science and the middle school sci-
ence teachers and the upper school science and [one of the faculty members]
brought [the student's letter about being gay up] and said, “I think really as sci-
ence teachers it is our duty to [address this]. [If] we are going to get asked these
questions it's our duty to [answer them]. So we need to be empathic to this and
we need to teach kids the correct things.”
Sara (FR) explained that other faculty members in the meeting were adamantly op-
posed to this proposal based on their personal values that homosexuality should not be
