Jeffrey Bottrell

In little ways, straight high school students make homosexual students feel uncomfortable every day, said Jeffrey Bottrell, an English teacher at Billings Senior High School.

Bottrell is the faculty adviser for the Gay/Straight Alliance, a group that began meeting after school at Senior High in the fall.

Students use the expression "that's so gay" almost unconsciously to describe something stupid or silly.

"It's said every day, every hour," Bottrell said.Worse slurs are spoken in hallways and classrooms.

"So many teachers kind of turn their back to it and allow it to occur," Bottrell said.

Last year, Bottrell regretted turning down a student who was looking for a faculty sponsor to form a campus group to promote tolerance for gay and lesbian students.

"It's so hard to be gay or lesbian and be in high school and go through all those issues to boot," Bottrell said.

This year, when a group of three or four students came to him with a proposal, Bottrell decided to help them.

The Gay/Straight Alliance is considered the first after-school club at a Billings public high school to focus on gay and lesbian issues.The alliance is not endorsed or supported by the school, but is allowed to meet on school grounds.

The students came to Bottrell with a written mission statement outlining goals and ground rules for the proposed organization.

"They knew this was not going to be an easy road to travel," Bottrell said.

He took the request and mission statement to Carol Wicker, Senior High's principal.

"It was something student-initiated from a group of students who didn't feel safe on campus," Bottrell said.

The proposal was also reviewed at a superintendents' meeting with other high school principals and by a district-wide diversity committee.

The students' mission statement states that no member of the alliance will make assumptions about another members' sexual orientation or obligate any member to declare personal sexual orientation.

More than 50 students came to the first meeting in November.So did a television news crew.
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Bottrell interpreted the large turnout as a show of solidarity by heterosexual students for friends who they may have thought needed support.

Darrell, a senior who has been elected to chair the GSA meetings, has been "out" for three years at Senior.Montana is a relatively hostile environment for liberal causes, he said, but no one at school has confronted him directly about his sexual orientation.

"I'm aware people talk about it behind my back," he said.

Although he describes Senior High as "a pretty tolerant school," he has heard secondhand about reports of potentially dangerous incidents.

Verbal harassment is the most noticeable form of intolerance, he said.In the hallways, he has heard people yell derogatory comments directed at particular individuals.

"One of the main accomplishments of the group has been just to establish the group," Darrell said.

Before announcing the first meeting on the public-address system, Bottrell put notes in teachers' mailboxes to let them know that the announcement might provoke discussions.

Bottrell assumes just having the group and announcing the meetings every week will make a difference in the level of tolerance on campus.It helps students realize that it's not a crime and it's not a joke to be a gay or lesbian student at Billings Senior High, he said.

At the first meetings, students batted around ideas for possible projects, including updating materials in the school library to reflect gay and lesbian lifestyles and offering education for teachers to heighten their sensitivity to issues.

Darrell would like to see some information about sexual orientation in the health curriculum.During his years at Senior, the only classroom information he has seen about homosexuality was a paragraph in a history book about the gay-rights movement.

Bottrell has fielded a couple of calls from concerned parents.He realizes that some parents may feel uncomfortable talking with their own children about sexual orientation.

"We don't check parent approval at the door when they come to the meeting," Bottrell said

He expects the group to create a more tolerant atmosphere at school, but he expects that progress to be slow.

"I knew that we would find kids on campus who would support us," he said."I expected the ones who were uncomfortable with it would tolerate what we were doing."

Updated: Sat Feb 9 02:11:23 CST 2002 Central TimeCopyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.

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