2008 Woodie Awards
More than a few bad apples...
Adrian Shanker
Issue date: 2/21/08 Section: Op/Ed
On Feb. 12, Lawrence King, an eighth grade student at E.O. Green Junior High School was shot point blank by a fourteen-year-old classmate.
The reason? King often wore jewelry, make-up, painted nails, high heels, and self-identified as gay. To his peers, this was "freaking the guys out."
The shooter is facing up to fifty years in prison and is being tried as an adult for King's murder.
While certainly deserving of punishment for such a hateful, brutal, and pointless crime that cost the life of yet another queer person, the societal problems are not even being recognized.
According to the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition, there have been over fifty brutal murders of youth under age thirty in the past ten years solely as a result of their gender identity or expression.
Eighty-eight percent of those victims were people of color, and nine in ten were biologically male (fifty under thirty report) and yet our society has not even begun to address gender-based violence.
Some of these deaths received virtually no media attention while others were major stories, and yet no laws have changed on the national level, and instead has become up to states, municipalities, and organizations, including workplaces, colleges, and school districts, to enact their own gender protections.
We are lucky to live in Allentown, a city that is the proud owner of a non-discrimination ordinance inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity.
And I am proud to attend a college that was receptive to amend our own anti-discrimination policy at the request of the Gay-Straight Alliance and myself in Oct. 2005 to include gender identity.
But policies alone are too passive to claim to create safety; an institution can and should do more to enhance gender safety on campus.
Muhlenberg has come a long way with the creation of the Sexual Assault Resource Team, the appointment of Anita Kelly as Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) Coordinator, the addition of the Multicultural Center and Rainbow Space, the distribution of condoms at no cost at four campus locations, and the availability of emergency contraception in the Health Center. But all this and our non-discrimination policy still limit us in our image as a gender-safe campus.
The reason? King often wore jewelry, make-up, painted nails, high heels, and self-identified as gay. To his peers, this was "freaking the guys out."
The shooter is facing up to fifty years in prison and is being tried as an adult for King's murder.
While certainly deserving of punishment for such a hateful, brutal, and pointless crime that cost the life of yet another queer person, the societal problems are not even being recognized.
According to the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition, there have been over fifty brutal murders of youth under age thirty in the past ten years solely as a result of their gender identity or expression.
Eighty-eight percent of those victims were people of color, and nine in ten were biologically male (fifty under thirty report) and yet our society has not even begun to address gender-based violence.
Some of these deaths received virtually no media attention while others were major stories, and yet no laws have changed on the national level, and instead has become up to states, municipalities, and organizations, including workplaces, colleges, and school districts, to enact their own gender protections.
We are lucky to live in Allentown, a city that is the proud owner of a non-discrimination ordinance inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity.
And I am proud to attend a college that was receptive to amend our own anti-discrimination policy at the request of the Gay-Straight Alliance and myself in Oct. 2005 to include gender identity.
But policies alone are too passive to claim to create safety; an institution can and should do more to enhance gender safety on campus.
Muhlenberg has come a long way with the creation of the Sexual Assault Resource Team, the appointment of Anita Kelly as Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) Coordinator, the addition of the Multicultural Center and Rainbow Space, the distribution of condoms at no cost at four campus locations, and the availability of emergency contraception in the Health Center. But all this and our non-discrimination policy still limit us in our image as a gender-safe campus.