BIAS

When I was an undergraduate student in college, I had an experience that opened my eyes to bias.

Does anyone remember the app Yik Yak? Launched in 2013, this smartphone app allowed users within a 5 mile radius to anonymously post, comment, and reply to a feed of content within the app. Users had no idea who was posting what, and as the name would imply, this anonymity resulted in a free gossip market for everyone in my small college town.

“Is she dating him?”

“I heard she was expelled from her last school.”

“Mr. ___ will not shut up in this class.”

I was intrigued by the freedom users had to say whatever the heck they wanted, about whoever the heck they wanted. No trail. No consequence. No one knew.

At first people posted somewhat innocent, benign content But things on Yik Yak got nastier the longer it existed. Profanity reigned. So did sexism, racism, and homophobia.

Tim was an openly gay young man in his freshman year at the school. He enjoyed expressing himself through clothing and makeup; he often wore dresses, high heels, wigs, colorful eyeshadow, and glitter–every day was a new chance to show a different side to his personality and style.

My conservative Christian school lagged woefully behind in inclusion policies, both in philosophy and practice. Many people found issue with the way Tim expressed himself. And while people (mostly) practiced self-control in real life on campus, Yik Yak offered a prime space for our homophobic community members to express their distaste.

“Why is he being given special privilege just because he’s gay?”

“We want him here; his lifestyle not so much.”

“You do you for attention.”

“We are called to keep our brothers and sisters accountable and not remain silent when we see sinful lifestyles.”

“Maybe if we all ignore that crossdresser dude, he will go away?”

And then this: “He would also go away if we lynched him.”

I and other concerned people immediately reported all of these horrible posts to the Student Life office.

What resulted was a series of emails and meetings; I was invited to come to the Student Life office and speak with the director and the title IX coordinator, who expressed concern, but soft concern. Looking back, I’m not sure why I was personally involved in the conversation at all; after all, all I had done was express concern.

Their response was concern, but it was soft concern. They couldn’t ban the app from campus because there were no real means of enforcing it a ban. They couldn’t know who had posted the threat because the IP address was untraceable. They didn’t understand Tim and why he dressed that way, but they wanted him to feel safe.

I left the office that day feeling frustrated, but unable to pin down exactly why. Maybe it was because I had wasted several hours advocating for campus safety, but nothing had really been accomplished other than a back-and-forth about how much we all cared.

Four years later, having gleaned experience in both confronting and reporting harassment, and knowledge on the legal responsibilities of education administrators and community authorities, I know now that those men should have taken immediate action to keep Tim safe in the advent of a very real threat to his life. At that time, social media posts had been instrumental in stopping campus shootings and violent crimes before they occurred, and in another state, a university student had been arrested for posting on Yik Yak a threat to shoot up the school.

So why didn’t my administrators seem to care?

I generally want to think the best of people who are in leadership in my community. But in this case, I have to accept that these men were biased because Tim was gay.

They couldn’t understand why he wore heels and wigs to school. They found his sexual orientation immoral and at odds with the school’s Biblical principals. To them, the comments were “rude and hostile,” but they were unsure of how to proceed.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter what an educator’s personal feelings or beliefs are when it comes to questions of student safety and their ability to thrive in an educational setting. It doesn’t matter if a harassed student is gay, transgender, female, a biology major, or the football captain. An educator’s bias shouldn’t even be part of the reasoning process in the event of a threat to safety, or really in any event. I realize now that in that moment, twenty-one year-old me had come across some pretty fierce homophobia, not just on the part of the anonymous poster on Yik Yak, but on the part of my school administration.

Now, as I sit in the classroom and learn what it means for me as a future educator to remain unbiased and supportive for all students, and to provide support and safety for any student experiencing adversity, I see the flaw in their behavior. All I can do, though, is reflect on that experience, settle in with the fact that there wasn’t closure at that particular time, and decide in advance that I will provide for my own students the kind of understanding and support that was not available for Tim.

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