Ellsworth High calls out name-calling

ELLSWORTH, Maine — Words have power.
And too often they are used, sometimes unwittingly, to wound.
That was a key message Tuesday for Ellsworth High School students during presentations marking National No Name-Calling Week, a nationwide effort aimed at ending name-calling of all kinds and eliminating bullying.
The message came from several speakers at the school, including a rabbi, a transgender male, an advocate for victims of sexual abuse, a black female student from the school and a civil rights educator.
Certain derogatory words, such as those used to describe black people, the mentally ill and people with alternative lifestyles, have tremendous power to hurt, according to Brandon Baldwin, education director with the Maine Civil Rights Project.
To drive the point home, Baldwin told those assembled brief stories. One was about a student who never felt safe because he was hounded for being gay. “I was terrified every minute I had to be out of my house,” Baldwin quoted the young man as saying. Baldwin said that the word “gay” had been beaten into the teenager’s head, though the young man had never been attacked physically.
He also told of two 11-year-old boys who, within weeks of each other, committed suicide by hanging themselves because classmates had accused them repeatedly of being gay.
Baldwin gave students a brief primer on Maine’s civil rights laws, on harassment policies in schools and in the workplace, but also noted that while there might be legal consequences to using hateful language, there are human consequences too. He pointed out that the words “gay” and “retarded” have become synonymous with anything that is stupid. “That’s so retarded,” or “that’s so gay,” are phrases that can be hurtful to people even when such comments are simply overheard.
Those comments were echoed by Andy Coat, a transgender male who works with the Trevor Project, a national, 24-hour suicide hot line for gay and questioning youth.
“That affects people; when something that is part of my identity is being used every day to say things are dumb,” Coat said. “I’m just asking that you think a little before you talk.”
Rabbi Darah Lerner of Congregation Beth El in Bangor and the Religious Coalition Against Discrimination also spoke about the power of words, urging students to use that power for good and to see the best in people beyond the differences between them.
“What you say and do has an effect,” she said. “I want you to realize how powerful you are and to use that power for good.”
Baldwin also noted the positive power of words and told another story, “10 Little Words,” about a 7-year-old girl who was able to prevent harassment of a classmate simply by telling the harassers to stop.
“Someone was able to stop something from happening by speaking up against it,” he said. “Your words carry power.”
The No Name-Calling Week program was organized by the Civil Rights Team and the Gay-Straight Diversity Alliance at the high school in an effort to make a difference in the school atmosphere. While EHS may have a more positive environment than some places, the students still face issues of discrimination.
“It may not be prevalent within the school, but it does exist here, just as it exists everywhere,” said junior Makayla Reed, one of the student organizers.
Reed and co-organizers Dominique Grindle, a junior, and Abby Merrill, a senior, said students got a strong message from the speakers. “Maybe not everybody, but enough of them; it’s going to make a difference,” Merrill said.
Students didn’t say much after the presentations, and Reed said that was an indication of the effect the speakers had made.
“I think part of that silence was reflection; taking time to think about what was said,” she said. “That in itself is a pretty powerful statement about what we did today.”