Last Thursday, April 14th, Nassau BOCES sponsored a special forum for school administrators on the subject of the NYS Dignity for All Students Act (DASA). The featured speakers were Pride for Youth's very own Director Pete Carney and Long Island Crisis Center Associate Executive Director Andy Peters.
Twenty administrators--representing fifteen districts from Oceanside to Shirley--attended. The main purpose was to familiarize school officials with new regulations to render school environments free of discrimination, harassment and bullying. Fought for by LGBT student advocates, DASA is the state's first safe schools legislation to include "sexual orientation" and "gender identity or expression" in a list of protected categories, along with race, gender, religion and many others.
As such, it is the first law that requires schools to have policies and practices that specifically address discrimination and harassment against LGBT students.
Pete and Andy's presentation covered an overview of DASA, legal aspects of anti-LGBT harassment, the prevalence of bullying and best practices for protecting students. The presentation was interspersed with profiles of gay students who were victims of bullying and committed suicide over the past year, including Tyler Clementi and Seth Walsh.
For more information on this topic, contact PCarney@longislandcrisiscenter.org.
