By Jen Hight, staff writer

Despite many attempts to create a campus of caring, openly homosexual students say they are still harassed for their sexual orientation.

As a result, recent, support has grown for the addition of a tolerance clause to the current anti-bullying and cyber bullying policy because gay students are currently unprotected under the district-wide code.

The current policy defines bullying as behavior that occurs over a period of time.

Senior Tara Pinkela, a member of Cal’s Gay Straight Alliance (GSA), supports the addition of a tolerance policy because she believes it could protect students from homophobic harassment.

Under the proposed policy, any harassment targeted at a homosexual student would be punished.

GSA president senior Veronica Saxer said a student recently entered the club and told members he had been harassed for being openly gay.

“We’re getting to the point where we do need a tolerance policy,” said Veronica.

Although the idea of a tolerance policy did not originate in the GSA, the club will be supporting it in the near future.

“We’ll definitely push for it,” said Veronica.

Students believe they can get away with targeting gays because the consequences are unknown, said Tara.

She feels that homophobic bullying receives little attention because many in the community and at school refuse to address this issue.

“That topic scares people,” said Tara. “Why stand up for yourself when you don’t feel supported?”

Assistant principal Damon Wright said administrators do not make a big noise about bullying incidents in order to protect the students involved.

“We want to protect their privacy,” Wright said.

But without seeing the consequences of bullying, many Cal students feel the policy is not being enforced at all.

“Cal High doesn’t really do anything,” said freshman Michael Chin.

Another problem with enforcing the bullying policy is that administrators only find out about bullying if someone comes forward, said Wright.

If students refuse to admit to staff members that they are being bullied, no action can be taken.

Other students, such as freshman Cameron Coy, believe administrators can take more action to promote a safer learning environment.

Many at Cal use homophobic slurs in daily conversation.

“There’s a lot of people who do that and don’t think how it affects the other person,” said sophomore Breanna Clark.

Wright admitted that Cal students use homophobic slurs humorously without thinking about the impact of their words.

The tolerance policy would address these slurs and protect students from these attacks.  But some students are not sure that the tolerance policy will have much effect on bullying.

Junior Asjia Ramirez agrees that a tolerance policy is needed, but feels that many students at Cal would just ignore it and it would not stop the bullying problem.

Cal has some programs in place to teach tolerance, one of those being the Character Counts program.

The Character Counts program, which is supported by the  leadership class, teaches tolerance by emphasizing virtues that promote good character.

Leadership asks teachers to pick students in their classes who exemplify those virtues and rewards them.

“If we teach students to live by the pillars we can create a safer environment,” said leadership adviser Eileen Mantz.

But some students feel that the Character Counts program doesn’t do enough to teach tolerance.

A survey conducted by The Californian indicated that 115 of 122 students in all grades feel that the Character Counts program did not appropriately teach tolerance.

“A lot of kids don’t really pay attention to the posters,” said freshman Olivia Percivalle.

Mantz said it isn’t leadership’s place to teach tolerance at Cal, just to support it.

Wright said administrators are open to ideas on new programs and tolerance policies.

“There’s always more you can do,” said Wright.