By Jordyn Wirth – Staff Reporter

On January 28, Keloni Grand was harassed and threatened to be killed for being a transgender female. This happened as she walked home from school shorty after school was dismissed. A group of males followed her out of Melrose High School in Melrose, Massachusetts, calling her hurtful names, threatening to do harm to her, and threatening to kill her. Grand tried to be the better person by trying to avoid the situation by simply walking away, but the group continued to follow her and harass her. One of the boys even spit on her.  Her grandmother and aunt could not believe what they saw and heard when they arrived to pick her up. Grand had made many complaints to the school and the police about the harassment she was receiving from others and no one acknowledged her.

“Sometimes, I think I should hide myself, but people tell me to keep pushing and be myself,” said Grand.

She claims that she is no longer a stranger to bullying since her transition started a month before this had occurred.

“There were 15, 16 guys out there, and I said, ‘All of them want to fight you for what?’” Grand’s aunt said.

These boys pushed her so far that she now wants to transfer high schools for her own safety.  She is just one of the 55% of LGBTQ youth that lives in a state that does not have laws that explicitly protect them from the discrimination towards them based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Kids are no longer wanting to attend their school’s in the fear of being bullied and harassed. This issue has been a growing world renowned problem for well over a decade. Something must be done to protect these innocent lives.

Many results from the 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey shows that, throughout the nation, 31% of United States high school students who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, or bisexual report about having been bullied on school property and 27.1% been cyberbullied in the past year. The study also showed that 10% percent more LGB students than the 6.1% of heterosexual students reported not going to school because of their mental and physical safety concerns. Among students who identified as “not sure” or “unaware” of their sexual orientation, 24.3% of them also reported being bullied on school property, therefore 22% of them being cyberbullied, and 10.7% of them not going to school because of safety concerns.

High school can be extremely challenging for the entire student body at times. High school is about finding yourself, your friend group, and interests. But, the LGBTQ students face additional harassment, abuse, and violence on a daily basis. Daniel Segobiano, who has self-identified as gay since kindergarten has been dealing with the harsh harassment all his life.

“I was bullied for being ‘too feminine and to avoid being teased I’d deepen my voice around others in P.E.,” Segobiano said.

Not only are kids no longer wanting to attend their schools, but they also are trying to change themselves in school to try to avoid the daily harassment that they receive.

LGBTQ students are surprisingly twice as likely to say that they were not planning on finishing out their high school years or even continuing their education on to college. No student deserves to feel like cannot continue their success because of the way others are making them feel.

The issue with harassment towards LGBTQ people has been going on for years and has been growing into a global issue for years as well. Not all people that are a part of the LGBTQ community face these problems everyday. However LGBTQ people, in general, are at a higher risk than the overall population of people in attempting suicide and having suicidal thoughts because of what society and peers put them through every day.

When narrowing the LGBTQ community down to specifically highschool students, these students who self identify as gay, lesbian, transgender or bisexual are almost five times more likely than the population as a whole to attempt to commit suicide and have suicidal thoughts based off of the discrimination, prejudice, denial of civil and human rights, harassment and violence and even family rejection which most parts of the LGBTQ community face.

On April 18, 15-year-old Alabama high school student Nigel Shelby committed suicide due to the harassment towards him for being gay.

“When you have a kid that’s already depressed and going through an immense amount emotionally, for you to call him names that you shouldn’t call them or say stuff to them — it sometimes has a worse effect than it would on a child who’s not struggling with depression,” his mother, Camika Shelby, said.

Nigel was described as “full of light” but he was still battling depression, attending doctors appointments to help him get better although this was very unexpected said his mom, she wanted him to be remembered for so much more than the reason for his death.

“He told me, ‘Mom I’m going to do better in school.’ He kissed me and told me that he loved me,” Camika said. “That was the last conversation that I had with my baby.”

This tragedy became intensely public, spreading so much awareness of suicide prevention and acceptance that even Justin Bieber took one of the articles on Nigel’s death to his instagram platform saying, “This is Horrible.”

“I hate this with a passion… stop the hatred please! I don’t understand how people can be so ignorant and hateful,” Bieber said.

Shelby explained she hopes to see that her son’s death sends an efficient message especially highlighting the harmful effects and long lasting effects of bullying and to encourage tolerance throughout the community.

School should be a safe environment to the whole community for the students to have the ability to learn, process, and build a foundation for their own success. The issue with certain kids not wanting to come to school, certainly reflects on the school itself and the community it is in, in fact nine out of ten students who self identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer reported about the deteriorating harassment and bullying that they were receiving last year.

In the hallways of North Bend High School, the gay and lesbian students are taunted with homophobic slurs. In the cafeteria, students pelted a transgender student with food. When the gay and lesbian students got into trouble, the school’s principal assigned a discriminating and harsh punishment specifically just for them; readings from the Bible.

The state was then able to uncover “substantial evidence” showing discrimination to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer students at North Bend High School.

“The department finds that discrimination on the basis of sex and sexual orientation may have occurred,” the investigator wrote.

People like Keloni Grand and Nigel Shelby should have never even have had to face these difficult situations in the first place. LGBTQ activists insist that a message of acceptance and tolerance must be more well-spread throughout the community highlighting some of these students stories to show the effects of their peers.

(Some information nytimes.com, stompoutbullying.org, nami.org, williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu, people.com)