Here or There? LGBTQ+ Students’ Access to Safe Schools by Geography in Wisconsin

• In Event: Promoting Safety and Resiliency in Schools

Abstract

As anti-LGBTQ+ politics escalate disparately across geography, school geographic locale increasingly plays an important role in LGBTQ+ student safety. Drawing on cross-sectional survey data from a comprehensive sample of Wisconsin high school students, this study uses a series of one-way ANOVAs and Tukey’s HSD tests for multiple comparisons to examine LGBTQ+ students’ school safety and mental health by geographic locale. Preliminary results from this study suggest that LGBTQ+ students feel a greater sense of safety and belonging in town and rural than in city and suburb schools. However, LGBTQ+ students in town and rural schools report higher rates of being bullied and greater mental health concerns than their peers in city and suburb schools.

Author

• Erin Gill, University of Pennsylvania