Students denied access to LGBT resource websites
The Sioux Falls School District’s internet filter carries an anti-LGBT bias, students say.
Students are barred from accessing LGBT resource sites such as “It Gets Better” and “GLADD" on district devices according to Roosevelt High School senior and former city council candidate Briggs Warren.
Students who try to reach these sites are met with a large exclamation point under bold red letters reading, “access denied.”
“It’s just being denied about who you are and that it’s just not OK,” said Tristen Bly, a sophomore at New Technology High School. “You feel like you don’t belong.”
At the same time, conservative sites such as the Family Resource Council and Focus on the Family are accessible, meaning that students are able to reach sites projecting negative views of homosexuality but not those with positive views.
Bly called the lack of access to sites aimed at helping LGBT students “discriminatory.”
“It would be very similar if you were to block a black rights movement website or any other type or major rights movement,” Bly said.
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School internet filters come from two companies, which sift through the millions of sites online and divide them into categories. The district then decides which categories to wholly or partially block, according to Bob Jensen, director of assessment, technology and information services for the district.
"Very rarely have we run across where there is a site that is blocked that shouldn't have been blocked," Jensen said, adding, "We're going to err on the side of being more strict than being more lenient."
Many of the filtered categories are obvious. Sites with pornography, gambling or instructions on how to make a bomb are blocked from student access.
It's the "sexual orientation" category that Bly's mother Kirsten LaRocca is concerned about.
"As a parent, obviously you want the school system to block out things that are inappropriate, but blocking out websites that may help a teenager this age maybe have some answers to questions ... I agree with (Bly) ... it's another form of discrimination," LaRocca said.
Warren expressed additional concern that the “access denied” page could be harmful to students searching for resources.
“To have this denied to you, it would make you start to wonder, ‘OK, so, is there something wrong here? Is this a bad thing for me to be thinking about?’” Warren said.
LGBT youth are four times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers, according to The Trevor Project, a suicide hotline specific to gay and questioning youth. This makes the blocked sites all the more troubling, according to ACLU executive director Heather Smith.
“Schools that block these resources, intentionally or otherwise, are sending a message that being gay, bisexual or transgender is wrong or shameful,” Smith said in a statement.
Many LGBT youth rely on a sense of community to combat suicide and depression, according to Ashley Joubert-Gaddis, director of operations for the Sioux Falls Center for Equality.
“If they don’t have access to finding those communities or information on how to find those communities, then it’s very dangerous,” Joubert-Gaddis said.
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The district has unblocked some sites that provide resources to LGBT students, Jensen said, but the sites can only be unblocked if someone within the districts brings them to his attention.
Students do not have a way to anonymously fill out a form to request a site be unblocked. They would be able to speak with a teacher or administrator and have them request the site be accessible, Jensen said.
However, for a student coming to terms with his or her sexuality, speaking to a teacher may be too much to ask, Warren said, adding that many students may not know that teachers can request access to specific sites.
He doesn't think the lack of access is "malicious" on the part of the district.
"I believe that their intentions are good, and they're just trying to do the best they can," Warren said. "But at some point it becomes either they're lazy (or) they're being negligent. They're just not being proactive."
And regardless of the intent, Warren added, that "access denied" can be just as damaging for students.
Blocked websites:
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