On Tuesday, March 18th, Born This Way Foundation held an event at Bard High School Early College Queens to present a panel of young members of the LGBTQ+ community, discuss case studies based on the online queer youth experience, and showcase novel research on media use and mental health. According to their website, Born This Way Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by Lady Gaga and her mother, Cynthia Bissett Germanotta in 2012, utilizes “research, programs, grantmaking, and partnerships to engage young people and connect them with accessible mental health resources.”
The “meeting” was an affair – the Bard cafeteria, home to food fights and freshman chaos was transformed into a professional event. RSVP was mandatory, and upon check-in one received a name tag, a schedule of the events, and assigned a seat. Round tables were draped with black tablecloths, a DJ booth was set up in the corner, tables at the back of the room were piled high with snacks and drinks, and a Born This Way Foundation backdrop was positioned next to the Bard Queens banner. The usually rowdy cafeteria was transformed into a conference room, a place where over 70 students, mental health professionals and local nonprofit leaders discussed novel research regarding queer youth.
The event, titled “Without it, I wouldn’t be Here Today: A Convening on LGBTQ+ Youth Connection + Safety in Online Spaces,” centered around new research that found that queer youth find safety, acceptance, and community in online spaces, but that these spaces can be unsafe if left unmoderated.
The event highlighted research done by Dr. Alvin Tran of the University of New Haven and his graduate students, Ria Umesh Maindan, Gauri, Moushume Chowdhury and Ja’nya Hill. They shared their findings from four focus groups made up of queer youth, and gave recommendations for professionals, educators, and health care providers on how best to support the queer community. The most prominent finding of the research was the young queer community’s strong reliance on online spaces as their dominant means of building social connection. LGBTQ+ youths are reported to be significantly more comfortable sharing their gender identity online than they are in-person (80 percent to 40 percent), and 44 percent of those surveyed consider online spaces “very safe” to express their LGBTQ+ identities, versus only 9 percent who consider in-person spaces “very safe.” The rates of depression in young people with supportive in-person spaces is 28%, versus 53% in those with spaces that are “somewhat supportive or less.”
In order to illustrate these ideas, Born This Way Foundation invited the Bard Queens Sexuality and Gender Alliance (SAGA) to formulate theoretical case studies of LGBTQ+ youth that struggle in their daily lives, but value these online communities. John Grauwiler, the advisor of SAGA, said that Born This Way Foundation presented the club members with “fledgling case studies and then the students sort of built them out, adding dimension to them.” Though he was there for the process, John said, it was almost entirely student directed. Julia Jean Louis, a member of SAGA, said that initially she was “a little skeptical,” as she worried the process of creating theoretical case studies would “make individuals fall into certain preconceived notions about what it means to be queer.” In the end, she feels like SAGA was sensitive to stereotypes, and that the group tried to represent as many different types of queer people as possible.
Each table discussed their case study, relating their personal or professional experiences, and eventually coming up with recommendations for both the fictitious person, their parents, allies, educators, and professionals for how to best support them. These recommendations focused on holding tech companies accountable for keeping online spaces safe and moderated, as well as fostering parental media literacy so that youth can feel understood. Groups emphasized the importance of schools as the first step to inclusion – integrating media safety training into health classes, creating queer-centered events, clubs and meeting places that provide in-person, face-to-face connection. The share out was an opportunity to hear from the vast array of professionals present at the event. Some of the most dedicated and intelligent people in the LGBTQ+ advocacy sphere spoke about change that needs to happen, and ways that everyone can do their part.
Presenting the Foundation’s youth-centric research in a school setting gave those who organized and attended the event a tangible sense of where their efforts will be felt the most. Dr. Dumaine Williams, Dean of Bard Early Colleges and Research Partner of the Born This Way Foundation, reached out to Laura Hymson, principal of BHSEC Queens, and the two worked closely to organize the event and to capitalize on the resources already available at the school.
The event also had a panel, consisting of three queer-identifying individuals: Julia Jean Louis, Robin Koshelev, a sophomore student at Duke University studying public policy with a focus on how minoritized groups experience violence, and Riley Reed, an appointee in the DC Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ+ Affairs, who is currently helping to organize World Pride. Their discussion centered around finding ways to build LGBTQ+ community in-person at high schools, universities, and in work environments.
Many participants of the event highlighted the idea that making these online spaces is important, but even more important is making in-person communities safe and accepting. “I speak to students all the time who talk about their experience at Bard or BHSEC being somewhat of a safe haven for them, where they’re able to lean into their identity in a way that maybe they can’t in other communities, at home, or other parts of their lives,” Dumaine Williams remarked. His goal is to understand homophobia from its deepest roots and origins in the individual – often, hatred towards an identity group stems from a place of ignorance, misunderstanding or never being challenged in one’s beliefs. The Bard High School curriculum and advisories confront this by “having students challenge those ideas, having students think more carefully, more thoughtfully about why they have the beliefs they have, and how they can have strong beliefs, but also create open environments for difference.” The school prides itself on the strong connections that students make with faculty, with both the goal of academic, research and career opportunities, and in the hopes that the youth of Bard have adults they feel comfortable turning to in moments of fear or discrimination.
As there were only four Bard students at the event, we sat down with Principal Laura Hymson to talk about how she plans to bring Born This Way Foundation research into the BHSECQ student body. “In a school,” she said, “education has to come first.” It is crucial to recognize that upon entering the building, students will see faces that they’ve never encountered before, and that is by no fault of their own. “Every year we have a new batch of 9th graders, who are coming in,” John Grauwiler said, “and I think we assumed that ‘oh, because they’ve passed through the doors of BHSECQ that by osmosis they’re going to actually get this’” (“this” being queer inclusion). The reality is that students come into the school with a wide array of perspectives.
BHSECQ addresses this by pushing into advisory meetings – Hymson reminisced about the old SAGA, who a few years back held in-depth discussions in advisories to combat homophobia. “It created a different kind of conversation than bringing in adults from the outside,” she said, and implores current brave students and members of the SAGA to do the same. Bard Queens created their gender neutral bathroom before the DOE shifted their policies to include trans students, which, at that time, was unheard of in NYC public schools.
Hymson has “a lot of conversations with teachers about representation in the books that we read, in the authors that we assign, what books are in the library, and what sections are in the library.” These are the more straightforward routes of attempting to create an inclusive school environment – it is the interpersonal student conversations and the offensive language thrown around in hallways that is more difficult to combat, which Hymson understands. “When I walk down the hall and students see me,” she says, “many students are on better behavior, but a really healthy school would mean that kind of kindness would happen even when nobody’s looking […] and that is really hard to accomplish.”
The teachers at Bard Queens embody this spirit – it is the students that don’t seem to follow the inclusive nature of the administration. One student, who will remain anonymous, says that most of the homophobia she has experienced has been indirect. “I think that a lot of straight people make comments that are offensive and rude but don’t really have the education to understand why. Especially in classes like seminar, it’s hard to educate homophobic students who don’t understand the complexities of gender and sex. When we talk about sex and gender, it’s obvious that some students feel like it’s stupid.” Students in classes seem disinterested in discussion of gender and sex, particularly in theory-based ways. There is some amount of apathy, the student says, and sometimes students mock these topics.
In the panel discussion, Julia reminisced about her first time stepping into the BHSEC Queens lobby, finding “a beacon of comfortability and hope” in the large pride flag painted on the wall. Her experience at Bard, however, has not seemed to reflect the message that this pride flag claims to represent. Julia has worked hard throughout her high school career to put together events highlighting and advocating for LGBTQ+ rights, like organizing a speaking event in the school library on National Coming Out Day, where students could share their experiences being queer. She decs-out her locker with rainbow SAGA paraphernalia, but has had her decorations ripped down, and seen her flyers spat on by students. Julia has repeatedly been met with the response that “there’s only so much we can do.”
John Grauwiler expressed a similar concern. “The identity of the school is that we are a school that is progressive and liberal,” he said, but agreed with Julia that consistent incidents of homophobia are troubling. “We could be better at being more demonstrative in terms of what we accept and what we do not accept. I think a lot of what we’ve done in the past is that we have relied on the history here […] in order for principles to be enacted, but in order for students to be reflective, you have to constantly engage them in that work.” John recommended more education about queerness in advisory, less tolerance of homophobia, and urged queer students to join SAGA. Strength in numbers, he says, helps to foster allyship.
Born This Way Foundation has opened the door for larger discussions of LGBTQ+ inclusion and community between Bard students and administration. At the event, Principal Hymson connected with a sexual health educator with the Hetrick-Martin Institute, who conducts free workshops about gender and sexuality exploration and inclusivity in schools and organizations. They plan on connecting to arrange a workshop within a Bard Queens health class. “[Born This Way Foundation] is an organization that makes a lot of sense for us to keep collaborating with,” Hymson said, “and it’s not just selfish wondering if maybe one day Lady Gaga might want to be a commencement speaker.”