Bullying Teacher Suspended, but problem continues

"Alex Merritt was not used to being the butt of jokes. Solidly built with a smooth face and shaved blond hair, he cruised to junior year of high school without the usual social speed bumps. But, enrolled in a part-time vocational program, he was taking his first lumps, scorned for being gay—or so his tormentors claimed. "Alex's fence swings both ways," they taunted. "Alex's boat floats in a different direction than the rest of the guys in the class." Suddenly everything Alex did seemed to offer evidence against him: when he mentioned Ben Franklin in a report on the Industrial Age, it was because he has "a thing for older men." When he covered Abraham Lincoln in another presentation, it was because Honest Abe and Merritt were "made for each other." Even the name of his car, a Ford Probe, was viewed as a sign of his homosexuality—the perfect vehicle for a boy who "enjoys wearing woman's clothes."

That was 2007, during the fall semester of the Secondary Technical Education Program (STEP) in Anoka, Minn., a suburb 20 miles from Minneapolis. As the year progressed, the sneers sharpened and spread through much of the student body. "Kids were calling me fag, they were calling me queer," recalls Merritt, who says that he is straight. The Minnesota native, then 16, says that he initially decided to laugh along with the verbal attacks, hoping they would disappear. Instead, he says they escalated. The final straw came in December that year, when Merritt asked to use the bathroom. Did he want a fellow student "to sit in the stall next to him and stomp his foot?" he was asked—reference to former senator Larry Craig, whom police arrested earlier that year in Minneapolis for allegedly using the move to solicit sex with an undercover officer in an airport bathroom. What makes this juvenile behavior so unusual? Merritt's bullies, who allegedly made all of these remarks, were his teachers.

In a damning report issued by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and made public last month, the alleged incidents at STEP were perpetrated by social-studies instructor Diane Cleveland and Walter Filson, a former cop who taught a course on law enforcement. While enrolled in a traditional high school nearby, Merritt came to STEP for three periods a day in search of college credit. What he found, according to the report—which draws on interviews with Merritt's classmates and echoes an initial report by the school district—was "regular comments, jokes and innuendo about his perceived sexual orientation," resulting in an environment that "a reasonable person would find hostile or abusive." Stained in the eyes of fellow students, who brought the STEP punch lines back to his regular high school, Merritt says he was forced to transfer out of the district to escape the bullying. As part of a temporary reassignment following Merritt's initial complaint to the district, Cleveland was ordered to spend the remainder of the fall semester—five days—working on a social-studies curriculum and "reflecting on diversity." She called in sick after serving just one day. While Filson has yet to be disciplined, the district later suspended Cleveland for two days without pay and agreed to give Merritt's family $25,000 for what a district spokesperson has called the "inconvenience" of his having to commute 25 miles to a new school.

Both Filson and Cleveland deny Merritt's allegations, and maintain that they have been miscast as homophobes. "I treat all students equally,"

"The truth of why our schools are so dysfunctional lies buried under layers of carefully positioned propaganda, and intentionally constructed terror, courtesy of our school boards all over our nation. Their covert weapon - teacher abuse to silence the truth - assures our administrations that they, rather than the will of the people, are in control".