Homophobic bullying
From L: Blake Skjellerup, Seb Stewart, Ruby Meiklejohn, Oscar Perry, Jana Cottle, Kent Barrett and Nikita Buys after Blake spoke to last week’s high school assembly. Photo Marg Braggins
Olympic speed ice-skater Blake Skjellerup had a clear message for Golden Bay High School students at their assembly last week.
“Bullying tells victims that they’re not OK. It makes it hard for them to be proud of themselves and to feel good about themselves.”
Blake, who was Maori Junior Sportsman of the year in 2003, spoke about his successful career in international sport since then. He also spoke candidly and courageously about his own experience of bullying when he was at school.
“I decided that I wanted to represent my country when I was about 12. Ice skating was a minority sport so I was a bit different from the ‘First XV’ kind of sportsman and that led to a bit of bullying. I was also bullied because I was gay.”
Blake was at the school as part of a region-wide tour to follow up Pink Shirt Day, the nationwide campaign to bring an end to bullying.
Blake was accompanied by Seb Stewart, the director of the Nelson-based Q-youth group. Q-youth is an organisation that provides support, information, advocacy and education for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people, their friends and families throughout our region.
After last Friday’s assembly, Blake and Seb met with senior representatives of the student council to talk about the things students could do to stop homophobic bullying.
“Five of the six schools in this region have gay-straight alliances. That’s where strong leaders in the school—gay and straight—make a public stand against bullying. The support of the straight students – especially the boys - is very important in setting a culture in which people are valued for who and what they are,” explained Seb. “Nelson College set theirs up just a week or so ago. It’s very exciting. We think it’s the first gay-straight alliance in an all-boys school.”
Seb and Blake spoke to the student leaders about strategies and resources and offered support for any action the student council decided to take. They were impressed to hear of the peer tutoring and mentoring that already goes on between senior and junior students at Golden Bay High School.
Seb spoke about the disadvantages faced by “queer” students in schools. “Many don’t come out because they are scared of what others will say and do. It means that they keep their sexuality a secret and they miss out on all the normal teenage developmental things like learning how to be in a relationship. Later, they’re faced with being an adult without this really important learning that their straight peers take for granted.”
Seb also told the students that he was grateful for the enthusiastic and sincere welcome he and Blake had received at Golden Bay High School. “Your principal Mr File had gone to the trouble of doing a bit of research on Blake’s career, and it was awesome that he started with a mihi.”
Jana Cottle, the chairperson of the student council said that the council would be meeting early next term to decide what to do in response to Seb and Blake’s visit.
“In the big picture, the visit adds to the anti-bullying scheme at our school. Bullying is big news nationally at the moment so it’s good to focus on it again. The issue of diversity is huge. It’s very close to home for students in a small school like ours. It’s very sad that the things that Blake spoke about at assembly are almost never said aloud. Seb and Blake’s visit gives us a focus point, a place to start. We’ll take the idea of the gay-straight alliance back to the council and see what happens.”
Neil Wilson
