The allegations behind six former Morgan Hill School District
students suing the district for failing to protect them from
anti-gay harassment are varied and occurred between 1991 and 1998,
according to Tuesday
’s published opinion of Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
Judge, Mary M. Schroeder.
The allegations behind six former Morgan Hill School District students suing the district for failing to protect them from anti-gay harassment are varied and occurred between 1991 and 1998, according to Tuesday’s published opinion of Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge, Mary M. Schroeder.
The primary plaintiff is Alana Flores, accompanied in the lawsuit by four other young women and one young man, all former MHSD students.
According a deposition given by Flores and filed with the lawsuit, she frequently found pornographic pictures taped to her locker.
Once a note that said “Die, dyke bitch, f— off. We’ll kill you,” was attached to the photo on one occasion. When she asked for help from Assistant Live Oak Principal Delia Schizzano she said she was told “Yes, sure, sure, later. You need to go back to class. Don’t bring me this trash any more. This is disgusting.”
Schizzano asked Flores if she was gay. When Flores answered “no,” she said “Why are you crying then?” The student continued to receive notes and pictures and continued to bring them to Schizzano’s attention but, she contends, “school officials took no action.”
The incident at Martin Murphy Middle School involve a male student who, according to published opinion, was beaten by six other students.
“Faggot, you don’t belong here,” he alleged he was told. The student was hospitalized with “severely bruised ribs.” After her reported the incident to former Principal Don Schaefer and Assistant Principal Frank Nucci, “they punished only one of the six students … and (the student) was transferred to another school.”
Two other plaintiffs, while students at Live Oak, said other students made anti-gay comments and sexual gestures and threw a plastic cup after the girls began dating during their senior year. The students allege that Bartschi told the girls to report the matter to campus police but did not follow up or investigate.
One student reported name calling and food throwing several times to a campus monitor. The report states that the monitor refused to act to stop the harassment even when she was a witness.
“On occasion,” the student alleges, “the monitor initiated a rumor among the students that (the student) and another female student were having oral sex in the bathroom.”
The student also alleges that a physical education teacher failed to take action when classmates said they didn’t want her to touch or look at them or to be their partner in class or when they called her “queer” and “dyke”. The teacher, the student alleged, suggested that she change clothes elsewhere so “her classmates would not feel uncomfortable.”
