Adviser: Recommendations on LGBTQ concerns need review

Two years after the Delaware Human Relations Commission released a report in 2015 recommending that Cape Henlopen administrators and students work together to resolve their differences, those recommendations need further review, says an adviser to Cape High's Gay Straight Alliance.

“Since the issues outlined in the DHRC report seemed not to have been resolved, I proposed to Martha [Pfeiffer, former GSA adviser] that a one-year status assessment of each mediation item could be helpful in understanding and resolving the outstanding concerns,” said Gary Colangelo, GSA adviser.

Colangelo said he drafted a proposal to address concerns, but students told him the issues in the mediation report were overstated or never existed. “GSA officers and members did not want to continue dealing with a process based on faulty, misleading information,” he said.

Pfeiffer disagrees with Colangelo and says there was a breakdown in communication between the GSA and the administration. “He was not there; I was,” she said.

The Delaware Human Relations Commission investigated Cape High following news stories in 2014 about administrators denying Gay Straight Alliance members the right to wear graduation stoles – rainbow-colored material that goes around the neck and designates them as members of the GSA. At the time, students said they were being treated unfairly by the administration, which allowed other students to wear stoles representing their student organizations. Following mediation with the commission, all sides agreed to work out their differences in the future.

In 2017, Cape High students again say administrators are ignoring concerns by members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning community. Several newspaper articles detailed their concerns, and a public forum June 19 hosted by CAMP Rehoboth continued the discussion.

“With the administration not following through, we're left to fend for ourselves. We have to figure out our own ways of avoiding confrontation and avoiding getting beat up, ostracized, absolutely degraded until you feel like nothing but dirt on a daily basis,” said Cape High grad Adrian D'Antoni during the June 19 meeting. “To have an authority figure that is supposed to protect you, not do anything about it even after you come to them a million different times; it is the worst feeling on the face of the planet.”

2014 complaint investigated

Nancy Maihoff was one of three commissioners who investigated after GSA officers said they had been questioned by administrators over a newspaper story about the stoles. GSA members also said they had fewer meetings than other student clubs and that administrators did not investigate LGBTQ bullying complaints placed by students in a Bully Box.

Maihoff said commissioners and a deputy attorney general first met with students, then GSA faculty advisors and finally with Cape High administrators. A fourth session was held with Cape High administrators and also Superintendent Robert Fulton.

Maihoff said Fulton was very cooperative. “It was a matter of days that the matter was settled,” she said.

The district approved policy allowing students to wear up to three stoles representing their clubs or academic success.

Following its interviews with students, faculty and administrators, the commission determined that the GSA, contrary to the complaints, had been meeting more times than other student organizations. The commission report said administrators met with GSA officers regarding a newspaper article in order to “assess and respond to questions from this newspaper.”

Administrators also said they investigate student complaints, but not if they are anonymous.

“There is no way to report back on an investigation from an anonymous report,” the commission wrote.

The commission recommended four areas for improvement to Cape Henlopen students, faculty and administrators. “Both sides were cooperative and eager to see these issues resolved,” the report states.

The commission went on to encourage groups to seek out mediation if problems arise in the future.

“We recommend that in the future, should any serious breakdown of communication between the GSA and administration occur, this breakdown be remedied via organizations that can mediate communication issues (e.g. Delaware Human Relations Commission, Community Response Committee),” the commission stated. “Bringing issues to outside organizations that cannot mediate the problems and issues only adds further to any miscommunication, and that in turn has the potential of creating a wider reach of miscommunication in the community outside of Cape Henlopen High School.”

Possible violation

The commission's mentioning “outside organizations that cannot mediate the problems” referred to a Washington Blade newspaper story in 2014 about the graduation stole controversy. The Blade is a newspaper that advocates for the LGBTQ community.

In June 2017, the Blade published a similar controversial story about Cape students concerned about discrimination against the LGBTQ community by Cape's administration.

Maihoff said she does not know whether students went to the publication with the story, or whether the reporter contacted them as a follow-up.

“If the students took the issues to the Blade, then they did violate the mediation agreement,” she said.

However, she said, she was unsure what, if any, repercussions accompany a violation. During her tenure as commissioner, she said, the commission has only ever held hearings.

Pfeiffer said students went to a Rehoboth area support group, PFLAG – Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, after administrators did nothing about their complaints.

PFLAG is “an organization that could most definitely mediate, of course, acting on the suggestions of the fourth recommendation of the Human Relation Commission,” Pfeiffer said.

Linda Gregory, president of PFLAG, also said students came to PFLAG with their concerns. “They were desperate for something to be done,” she said. “We didn't tell them to go to the Blade. The kids were desperate to make it stop.”

Gregory said she did not speak to administrators about the students' recent concerns, but she has sat in on individual parent meetings with administrators to discuss LGBTQ issues.

In a second story that ran in June 2017, the Blade said students and parents reached out to the publication with their concerns. Students and parents also reached out to a local television station.

Maihoff said the commission has not been asked to mediate the present issues and cannot get involved unless asked by the administration, students or faculty.

Colangelo said he plans to meet with new Cape High Principal Nikki Miller before school starts to discuss the GSA.