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http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2012/05/s...g-gay-student/
HANOVER TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Jared Swank had a great time at his senior prom last weekend, but the happiness turned into disgust when a teacher he trusted showed a video of him dancing with his transgender date to students in her classroom on Monday.
Swank, an 18-year-old senior at Hanover Area High School, has been openly gay since the eighth grade, and he has suffered bullying and ridicule from both teachers and students at Hanover Area the entire time he has attended the school, he said.
Jared Swank. (Times Leader photo by Clark Van Orden.)
“I was very, very hurt,” said Swank. “I was upset by the fact that she was showing other students, because most of them are males and straight people don’t like to hear about gay people, so they’ll sit there and make fun of them,” he said.
He said the teacher should “absolutely not” have shown the video in class.
“She told me that she wanted to show her daughter, not the entire school,” Swank said in an interview at the NEPA Rainbow Alliance offices in Wilkes-Barre on Thursday afternoon.
And Swank said it’s not the first time he has been bullied at the school.
“I’ve been made fun of by teachers who have said things. It’s just an ongoing thing and I’d like to see other students not have to go through this. One of my friends got expelled not long ago for (his reaction to) being called gay. It’s just ridiculous that everybody has to go through this,” Swank said.
His mother, Dawn Mendygral, said that in one instance, a district employee asked Swank “if he had any rainbows in his backpack.” A rainbow is a symbol of the gay community.
In another episode, Swank was wearing pink eye shadow and his teacher went to the next classroom and invited students over “to show the students that he had pink eye.” In a third, a teacher threw a notebook at him to draw his attention and the wire cut her son’s finger.
She said football players pelted her son with lollypops at a parade, students threw stones at him in gym class and roughed him up a bit in the halls. She reported each incident and was told they would be addressed, but she was never told how.
Mendygral, 41, of Hanover Township, said that in the latest incident, the teacher asked Swank and his prom date, 16-year-old Selena Leyc, who attends Lake-Lehman School District, if she could take a short video of them dancing, using her iPhone, to show her daughter.