What is a school community to do…

Over the past week or so there have been on-again / off-again conversations about the Supreme Court nomination hearings and the so-many issues that have bubbled out of them. Clearly, most of these conversations have taken place with the older students and, in all likelihood, will continue in the coming weeks and months as the issues are important and complex, take time to examine, and are found in many areas of our lives.

I spent a few minutes yesterday sharing the school’s new sexual misconduct/harassment policies with the high school students. I wanted to make sure the students know where to find the policies on LREI Connect, to speak a little about the fact that the policies are largely student written, and to talk about the procedures outlined in the policies. It is always a pleasure to be with our high school students. They were attentive and, while there were only a few, their questions were quite thoughtful. As our conversation ended, I noted that the hard work will come next, working with the teachers and others to create a “culture of consent” and to investigate what this means and how we can foster such a thing. Hard work but certainly a task of which our students, all students for that matter, are capable. My time with the students reminded me of something I had read in Wednesday morning’s New York Times, in a letter to the editor written by noted sexuality and health educator Deborah M. Roffman. She wrote:

The “boys will be boys” stereotype certainly gives license for boys to disrespect, devalue and mistreat girls, but deeper analysis of it also reveals the fundamentally demeaning ways in which we think about boys.

So what is a school community to do?  We must continue to have the conversations that we already have, adding more of the same and some new ones into the mix. We have to work towards creating the aforementioned culture of consent. We have to talk about the ways it is hard to be a girl or woman – the systemic, accepted, public harassment and abuse that is so embedded in our culture, and how we can become a more supportive, righteous community. We have to talk about the ways it is hard to be a boy (and I don’t mean the ways in which being a man is hard that were mentioned after last week’s hearings, that men and boys are being held to an unfair standard, that common “boys will be boys” behaviors are to be excused).  I refer to the fact that there are stereotypes of masculinity that are quite harmful to boys and men, for example; what can we do to avoid being part of this problem. We also have to move out of the binary “girl and boy” paradigm and look at ways that sex, attraction, power, and other factors make relationships and interactions complex and challenging for all, no matter how one identifies, and how these relationships can also be thrilling and wonderful.