Coming Out Journal: Top 10 LGBT Scholarships
Top College Scholarships for LGBT Students
By Kathy Belge, About.com GuideHere are some of the top national and regional scholarships available to LGBT students. Be sure to check your local gay community organizations or college of choice too, because there are many local LGBT scholarships…
(via qbits)
Source: lesbianlife.about.com
John Kerry urges LGBT-friendly financial aid
Sen. John Kerry is leading the way in asking the federal government to make financial aid a little easier to come by for transgender students or students of same-sex parents.
For trans students, filling out the FAFSA, which determines financial aid, can be difficult and unhelpful because the name and gender information students provide may not match their official documentation. Kerry called this issue “disturbing” and wants to find a way to fix it.
Kerry also asked that students with same-sex parents not be short-changed because their parents’ relationship receives fewer benefits due to DOMA. From the Advocate:
“I request that you consider ways to clarify the FAFSA for applicants who have same-sex parents and for students who are gay and transgender,” Kerry wrote. “I also ask that you consider the whole of the financial aid process — beginning to end — from the perspective of these applicants and make any possible modifications that would improve the application and reward procedures for all applicants.”
Kerry’s turning out to be quite the ally. These changes could make a big difference for lots of students, so hopefully more people get behind them.
Source: gaywrites
Ohio teen sentenced to 90 days for video recorded attack on gay classmate | LGBTQNATION.COM
(TW: anti-gay assault, discrimination, hate crime, heterosexism)
A judge has sentenced 15-year-old Levi Sever to a 90-day sentence in a juvenile detention center for the October assault on an openly gay classmate that was recorded on video and then posted to Facebook.
Zach Huston and his mother Rebecca Collins
Ross County Chief Juvenile Court Judge Richard Ward handed down the sentence Wednesday to Sever, who had previously pleaded guilty to a single count of delinquency assault.
The victim, 15-year-old Zach Huston — a student at Unioto High School — suffered physical injuries as a result of the beating. His mother, Rebecca Collins, described the attack as hate motivated gay bashing.
In addition to serving a 90-day sentence, Sever was ordered to undergo mental health counseling and continue his education during his detention, said Ross County Prosecutor Matthew Schmidt.
Sever has not been attending classes at the high school since the assault first came to light and Zach’s mother launched a formal protest. However, the school’s administration has declined to reveal what disciplinary actions were taken against Sever.
The Columbus Dispatch reported that Huston and his mother, Rebecca Collins, have repeatedly alleged that school officials have not responded appropriately to their reports about bullying due to his sexual orientation.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio who is representing Huston and his mother have threatened to take legal action against the Ross County school district in Federal Court unless it immediately implements changes to protect students, especially LGBTQ pupils such as Huston from bullying.
Late Thursday, a spokesperson for the ACLU in Columbus told LGBTQ Nation that Union-Scioto School District administrators have as of yet to address the ACLU’s request, which included amending the district’s anti-bullying policy to specifically prohibit the harassment of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students.
Case Closed: Jamey Rodemeyer's Bullies Not Charged | advocate.com
TRIGGER WARNING: anti-gay bullying, suicide
Police closed the Jamey Rodemeyer case today without prosecuting any of his bullies, saying they lacked proof he’d been harassed.
Rodemeyer killed himself in September after facing bullying that he “could never escape,” he said in posts on the Internet. But Amherst, N.Y., police chief John Askey said that despite the 14-year-old’s complaints online about bullying, there wasn’t enough evidence of what happened, and the bullying couldn’t be pinned to any single student.
For example, police toldTheBuffalo News that they had investigated five incidents at North High School and found none had been reported to authorities, leaving investigators to rely on secondhand information.
“In most cases, you need a victim and a complaint,” Askey told the News, noting that he isn’t satisfied with the outcome.
After their son’s death, Rodemeyer’s parents shared a story on the Today show of how their daughter had gone to a school dance to take her mind off the death of her brother only to be met with taunts of “better off dead.” The superintendent identified the student responsible for the chants and issued a suspension, taking the punishment “to the fullest extent allowed under education law.”
That appears to be where the punishment will stop in the Rodemeyer case. The superintendent said he planned more education about the effects of bullying.
The tragedy had become a flash point in the national debate over how to address bullying, with Lady Gaga raising the issue with President Obama shortly afterward and activists calling for increased antibullying protections in schools.
Also in recent months, a videotaped beating of an Ohio student whose mother says he was repeatedly harassed for being gay became a viral sensation on YouTube because of outrage.
All of this has contributed to renewed attention around bullying and how it sometimes ends in death, including a special report from Anderson Cooper on CNN. Experts recommend that any young LGBT person with thoughts of suicide contact the Trevor Project’s hotline (866-4-U-TREVOR).
Student-Made Documentary Examines Discrimination Against LGBT Teens | advocate.com
A new student-filmed documentary, Breaking the Silence, examines the discrimination faced by LGBT teenagers in Colorado and how they determined to become antibullying activists.
Shea Alexander Dietz came out as gay during his senior year in high school and, deeply affected by the rash of suicides due to antigay bullying, he decided to chronicle his own journey to becoming an activist. When his principal denied him filming access inside the high school, Dietz decided to film the lives of his friends away from the school. Dietz obtained some powerful footage, including that of one female student who came out to her teacher who told her she was going to hell. Dietz and his friends eventually created their own antibullying campaign.
For more information visit BreakingTheSilenceTheFilm.If you click the title link above, you can view the trailer.
Jamey Rodemeyer’s Bullies Are Happy He’s Dead, But Is It A Bad Idea To Prosecute Them? | gayagenda.com
This past weekend, the sister of 14-year-old suicide victim Jamey Rodemeyer went to a school dance to take her mind off of her brother’s death and hang out with all of her friends.
“Then,” says Jamey’s mother Tracy, “all of sudden a Lady Gaga song came on and they all started chanting for Jamey, all his friends and whatever. Then the bullies that put him into this situation started chanting ‘You’re better off dead, we’re glad you’re dead.’”
They sound heartless, but is pressing criminal charges against them actually a bad idea?
Wheaton College LGBT Alumni Band Together to Support Current Students
One of the reasons we know we’re winning the “culture wars” that the Religious Right imposed on us is that arguments about homosexuality are now predominantly happening within conservative religious congregations and institutions. The mainstream population pretty much gets it these days.
A couple of months back, students and alumni at Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas, launched the Harding University Queer Press, to give a voice to LGBT people forced to suffer in the intellectual Chernobyl of that Church of Christ clown college. Then last month, a New York Times piece explored the state of affairs at Christian colleges like Baylor and Abilene Christian, where, despite administrations that encourage a repressive regime against dignity of any sort for LGBT students, we are nonetheless coming out and changing those institutions from within. Of course, many of the straight students at these institutions are supportive because, well, times have changed, and even within the Evangelical world, people under forty just don’t buy into the anti-gay spew like their parents do/did.
Now an alumni group from conservative Wheaton College, in the Chicago suburbs, has formed to support LGBT students at that institution:
[Gay Wheaton student Zack LaButta’s] perspective is shared by many members of OneWheaton, a self-described grass-roots organization of lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual and questioning Wheaton College alumni and their supporters. Group members say they felt isolated when they were at the school and now they are trying to support current students who may feel that same isolation.
Labutta said he learned of the group last week, two days before it came on campus to hand out a letter after a chapel service.
“OneWheaton is doing an excellent job trying to promote a voice on Wheaton’s campus that has been left out of the debate, and noticeably so,” Labutta said.
[…]
“Our position is that the college is not intentionally trying to be malicious,” [2007 graduate Kristin Winn] said. “They believe this is a way of loving homosexual students. I applaud them for talking about it.” But she said the speaker series left out the possibility that their sexuality is not a sin and that they can still lead vibrant lives while “remaining true to who they are.”
It’s good to see this happening, and it will happen more and more. Belmont University in Nashville, a Baptist institution, was so overwhelmed by student and alumni support for an open, inclusive environment for gays and lesbians that they changed their nondiscrimination policies to include gays, and indeed has allowed the school’s first club for gay and lesbian students.
[That’s a wingnut link, by the way, but it has the pertinent information.]
As this happens, radical Christian clerics and their followers will scream louder and louder about the “gay agenda infiltrating their world” or whatever, but the truth is that gay people have never been the “other” that wingnuts wish we were. Indeed, many of us were raised by Evangelical wingnuts! Or, in my case, I was raised “wingnut-adjacent,” in that my parents were never really that extreme, but church and school environments sometimes were. So there is no “infiltration” going on.
The simple fact is that things have Gotten Better to the point that gay kids and college students who are still trapped within the walls of anti-gay wingnuttia are, more and more, choosing to stay and fight, and have their voices heard. This is a very good thing.
Parents of Rutgers student: No harsh punishment
The parents of the Rutgers University student who killed himself after authorities said his intimate encounter with a man was captured by a webcam want his classmates’ invasion-of-privacy cases prosecuted, but they don’t want them to receive harsh punishment. Tyler Clementi’s parents, Jane and Joseph Clementi, issued a statement Tuesday, six months after he jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge.
“The past six months have been the most difficult and painful of our lives,” they said. “We have done our best to deal with the grief and pain of the death of our son Tyler, in awful circumstances while dealing with the crush of media attention, the pending criminal investigations and, of course, our own unanswered questions.”
The Clementis have not granted any interviews, but have released a few statements to reporters. The latest one was sent first to The Star-Ledger of Newark.
Clementi’s roommate, Dharun Ravi, and classmate Molly Wei are each charged with two counts of invasion of privacy. Authorities said that last September, they used a webcam to watch part of Clementi’s encounter with another man. Within days, Clementi killed himself.
Family attorney Paul Mainardi said the Clementis feel it’s important to establish it was not “a college prank.”
Gay rights and anti-bullying groups seized on the suicide and made it a symbol of the movement to take bullying, particularly of young gay people, seriously.
The charges against Ravi and Wei do not link the alleged spying to Clementi’s suicide.
The Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office has weighed additional bias intimidation charges, but no decision on those more serious charges has been announced. Mainardi said he believes the investigation is substantially complete.
Lawyers for the students, both of whom have since withdrawn from Rutgers, have said their clients are not guilty of any crimes. The lawyers did not immediately return calls on Tuesday.
The fallout from the case has been immense. The Point Foundation, a scholarship-granting group based in Los Angeles, has announced a scholarship in Clementi’s memory.
The Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra and the Bergen Youth Orchestra, where Clementi, a violinist, had been a member, have had performances in his memory and named concertmaster chairs after him.
His parents say they are also starting a foundation that would raise public awareness of bullying, assist vulnerable young people and encourage research and awareness of the effects of electronic media.
Rutgers has decided to allow men and women to be roommates in parts of certain dorms – largely as a way to make gay, lesbian and transgender students more comfortable.
And celebrities from President Barack Obama to entertainer Ellen DeGeneres have campaigned publicly against bullying.
Florida teacher mocks student for being gay Luke Herbert is...
Florida teacher mocks student for being gay
Luke Herbert is 15 years old, a freshman in high school, and gay. He gets bullied sometimes - by students AND a teacher.
Herbert reported that his teacher singled him out and mocked him for being gay.
Click the link above to read the full article.
Source: gaywrites
Texas School Shuts Down All Clubs to Avoid GSA
Filed by: Bil Browning
February 28, 2011 1:00 PM
Corpus Cristi, Texas’s Flour Bluff Intermediate School District Superintendent, Julie Carbajal, has 
decreed that all extracurricular clubs on campus will be shut down to prevent the formation of a Gay-Straight Alliance group. Student Bianca “Nikki” Peet was blocked from creating the club and after a national outcry, the school decided to handle the issue not by creating an atmosphere of tolerance and acceptance, but by discriminating against all students.
By canceling all extra curricular clubs on campus, Flour Bluff ISD hopes to avoid the Equal Access Act — a federal law, passed in 1984, that requires schools receiving federal funding to offer “fair opportunities for students to form student-led extracurricular groups, regardless of their religious, political and philosophical leanings.” The district still maintains that they do not have to follow the Equal Access Law.
Superintendent Carbajal claimed, “We need to be fair and equitable to all,” but that is not how supporters of “Nikki” Peet see it.
As LGBT teen suicides have skyrocketed lately, do you think Carbajal will feel the least bit of remorse if one of their students gets her clear message that they’re not worthy of respect and takes their own life?
Somehow, I doubt it.
