Protecting students from harassment

There are people whose personal biases are so overpoweringly strong that it

takes something in writing to remind them not to make life miserable for others

who meet their definition of prejudice bait. That’s why the state Board of

Education’s adoption of anti-harassment rules for public schools in Hawai’i is

both good and sad.

The rules are good because no student should be

subjected to violence, threats, harassment or ridicule for their ethnicity or

sexual orientation. Based on accounts related to the board members at their

meeting on Kaua’i Thursday shortly before the rules were approved, gays and

racial minorities have been beaten in some instances, discriminated against in

others by fellow students.

Some critics of the newly clarified rules mask

their own bias or miss the overriding point by wrongly claiming all students

should be protected from harassment, not just select groups. The simple fact is

that the intolerance addressed by the board action targets specific types of

students. Children learn virtually from day one that they shouldn’t pick on

classmates.

And that’s the sadness in all of this. In a state where there

is so much emphasis on spreading aloha, the selective application of that

quality requires telling certain students — and, by extension, anyone else

whose attitudes might validate and even foster intolerance in our young people

— that their classmates must not be mistreated for simply having a different

color of skin, a different ethnic background, or for being gay.

But be told

they must. By clearly stating what should be obvious, the anti-harassment rules

will hopefully make themselves virtually obsolete some day. That’s the day when

students being held to the rules’ strict enforcement now and in years to come

will set a new standard of acceptance for future generations.