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NY Senate Passes Anti-Bullying Legislation

06/23/2010- by Natasia Langfelder

A few hours ago, the NY State Senate passed the ‘Dignity for all Students Act.’ The Empire State Pride Agenda has investing much time, money and effort to get this bill passed. They explain the act and why it is important succinctly:

The Dignity bill creates tools for school administrators, teachers, parents and students to address bullying and bias-related behavior of all kinds that interfere with student safety and learning. Key provisions include: developing rules to prevent and respond to discriminatory harassment and hate violence; establishing teacher, staff and administrative training guidelines; incorporating discrimination awareness into civility and character education curricula; and required reporting of incidents of bias harassment to the State Education Department.
In addition to sexual orientation and other categories such as race, color, national origin, ethnic group, religion, religious practice, weight, and disability, Dignity offers protections based on gender identity and expression. This marks the first time that protections based on gender identity and expression would be included in state law.

The act was passed by an overwhelming majority,with 58 Senators in favor of the bill and only 3 dissenting.  Gay City News reports that all three ‘no’ votes were from Republicans, whom apparently believe in children bullying one another.

The act passed the State Assembly and only needs to be signed by Governor Paterson, who has already stated his support for the act and has always stood in favor of LGBT civil rights.

Christine Quinn, Speaker for the NY City Council and out lesbian commented on the passage of the bill, saying:

“Tonight we celebrate a great victory for New York. In a bipartisan vote, the State Senate stood up for New York’s schoolchildren by passing the Dignity for All Students Act (DASA). This will give New York State the tools is needs to finally address the problem of bullying and bias-based harassment in our schools. 
 
“A school environment free of bullying and harassment is essential to the academic success of every child.  No young person should fear going to school because of who he or she is, or is perceived to be.
 
“I want to thank the lead sponsors of this bill – Senator Thomas Duane and Assembly Member Daniel O’Donnell – for their tireless leadership on this important legislation. I applaud Senate Majority Leader John Sampson and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver for their leadership on this issue in Albany.  I also thank the advocates who worked for so many years to reach this point, as well as the thousands of New Yorkers who called, wrote and met with their Senators about this bill, year after year.
 
“Going forward, we will use the tools that this bill provides to combat bullying in all forms, among all our youth.” 

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