Tag: University of Vermont

From the moment he entered the gym for a Special Olympics unified basketball team practice as a Burlington High School junior, Sam Donnelly ’20 felt it. “It was like a switch flipped,” he says, immediately drawn in by a warm welcome and seamless spirit of equality and inclusion. So began a lasting relationship.

Six days after high school graduation, Donnelly moved to New York for a gap year with, he admits, a vague plan and a thin bank account for city living, built on mowing lawns and other high school jobs. Almost immediately, a shot in the dark “Can I have an internship?” tweet at Special Olympics in NYC landed on the right phone. Yes, you can. Unpaid, but Donnelly stacked up experience and later earned a paid internship at Special Olympics Vermont.

During his first year at UVM, 2016-17, Donnelly deepened his Special Olympics work on both a local and global scale—founding the UVM Special Olympics Club to rally like-minded students and traveling to Graz, Austria, last spring for the Special Olympics Global Youth Summit. There, Donnelly presented on his idea, funded by a $2,500 SO grant, to create a social inclusion class at Vermont high schools.

As his sophomore year begins, Donnelly already has a strong vision for where he’d like to be when college graduation arrives. President of UVM Democrats student club, he has his sights on a Burlington City Council seat, first step, he hopes, in a career in public service that might one day lead to the U.S. Senate. At the core of Donnelly’s political ambitions—supporting and shaping education and inclusion at a policy level.

A major in community and international development in Community Development and Applied Economics, Donnelly has found an ideal academic fit. “That department is what makes it for me at UVM,” he says and rattles off the names of professors who have influenced him—Dan Baker, Kelly Hamshaw, Jane Kolodinsky, Tom Desisto. “I am not only excited to go to class, I’m excited do my homework. Every single example used in that program is about Vermont. I get the opportunity to apply that, make it real.” 

Source: UVM News

For the past 23 years, Jeff Modereger has told first-year students a poignant story about one of his first plays at UVM as a new theater professor. Illustrative of the healing power of good theater, the story has stayed with many students long after graduation.

One of those students, Randa Karambelas ’01, was so moved by Modereger’s description of the audience reaction to “A Piece of My Heart”— a play based on true stories told by women who served in Vietnam — that she vowed to produce it one day in New York. Now an accomplished actor, producer and writer, Karambelas made good on her promise by bringing the play to the off-Broadway IATF theater this month via her own production company, Little Spoon, Big Spoon, Productions, LLC.

What’s more, she vowed that only Modereger could be the set designer—another promise kept.

Karambelas had one condition: that Modereger’s design would be the central element. “I hired my entire production team with the disclaimer that the scene design was already established,” says Karambelas. “Once everyone saw Jeff’s design, they were all onboard and we built the production from there.”

At first glance, it is a raked stage covered in textured fabric with bamboo lattice worked into the background. The design is deceptively simple, until the end when it underscores Shirley Lauro’s entire script and the 20-year journey these women have been on. “It ties together the past, present and future in a way that I have never seen done before in theatre,” says Karambelas. “And no one in the audience expects it. It’s the final button.”

What the audience doesn’t know is that Modereger’s design pays tribute to his cousin, David E. Hevle – a Marine Corps Corporal who died in 1967 while on duty in Quang Tin. For Modereger, Karambelas and the production team, the play is a tribute to his cousin. “The storytelling, the direction, the acting and each of our design elements echo the only line that is repeated throughout the play – ‘to honor the brave men and women who served so well and gave so much,’” says Karambelas.

“That’s the power of theater,” says Modereger, a scenic designer for Broadway, television, and film. “We humanized everybody sitting in the theater. It stuck with Randa all these years. It’s the reason I keep telling these stories to my students.”  

For Karambelas, bringing the play to New York marks a milestone in a career that began in theater, took a turn into the corporate world, and has returned to her love of the stage.

Building from experience gained in the business world, she launched Little Spoon, Big Spoon Productions, along with business partner Chelsea J. Smith, with a focus on socially conscious artistic ventures that support related non-profits. For “A Piece of My Heart,” 20 percent of all proceeds and 100 percent of all donations will benefit Hope for the Warriors, a veterans organization supporting post 9/11 service members and their families.

One of her proudest accomplishment with this production: keeping it in the UVM family, by hiring alums including Timothy Parrish ’07 as a lighting designer, Danielle Varcasia ’10 as an electrician and Jamien Lundy Forrest ‘01 as part of the technical crew.

“Jeff taught me that art can heal,” says Karambelas. “As an artist, I have learned that if art doesn’t move you, mark you or change you in some way, then you are doing it wrong. I am so fortunate that today, all these years later, I have been able to team with my college professor on a professional level and do just that. We’ve come full circle. I am very proud of what we have put on this NYC stage.”

Source: UVM News

With an array of objects that are provocative, eclectic, beautiful, and, at their essence, sacred, the “Spirited Things” exhibition opening at the Fleming Museum this week is the product of years of work and collaborative vision among Marsh-Professor-at-Large J. Lorand Matory, Fleming staff, and students in religion professor Vicki Brennan’s classes.

The pieces on display are largely from Matory’s “Sacred Arts of the Black Atlantic Collection,” assembled across decades, inspired by both his religious faith and scholarly focus. Matory, Lawrence Richardson Professor of Cultural Anthropology and African and African American Studies at Duke University, connected with UVM via the Marsh program in 2013. 

The new exhibition includes sacred objects from the Yoruba religion of West Africa, as well as Haitian Vodou, Cuban Santeria, Brazilian Candomble, and Caribbean Spiritism, faiths that emerged from the practices of enslaved Africans who blended their ancestral cultures with that of their captors.

“The items in the collection have been selected for their beauty, their iconographic accuracy, and their ritual power,” Matory says. “I have loved them and cared for them for nearly four decades.  However, spirited things like these are not usually given a place in a museum of fine arts. So, I feel rapturous that my colleagues in the world-class Fleming Museum not only embraced the provocation posed by an under-appreciated aesthetic but also felt the same exaltation that I feel in the presence of these spirited things.”

Several weeks before the show’s opening, Fleming curator Andrea Rosen walks through the gallery where some displays are complete and others await finishing touches. She points out favorite pieces and discusses how the show has come together.

“An academic museum really thrives on collaborations like this. It is true of any collaboration—whether with a collector or a scholar or a living artist—that we as the museum get pushed to expand our comfort zone because of this meeting in the middle,” Rosen says. “Randy is a bit of a provocateur. Understandably and laudably so, he wants to get visitors to think about the fact that these objects are not exotic, they are not foreign, they are us. The very complex nature of them and the nuanced relationships they represent, that’s true of objects in our own lives, maybe in ways we don’t realize.”

The new exhibition traces to when religion professor Vicki Brennan’s classes began to study Matory’s “Sacred Arts of the Black Atlantic Collection” and the rituals of priestesses and priests of the Afro-Atlantic religions.

The first wave of Brennan’s students explored the collection via Matory’s website, curating a selection of objects and identifying themes, later presenting them to both Matory and the Fleming leadership. During a subsequent semester’s course, students in one of Brennan’s courses took the next step by beginning work on supplemental educational materials for the exhibition. This semester, her students will ethnographically document how audiences receive the show.

“They’ll examine issues of religion, race, representation, and display, especially concerning sacred objects and the staging of an exhibition about African and African-American religions in a museum located on a university campus in one of the least diverse and least religious states in the United States,” Brennan says.

She adds, “The student involvement in this project has been a great experience for them to learn more about how to apply the ideas and theories we talk about in class to real world contexts, such as the museum.”

As the Fleming features “Spirited Things” this semester, the museum is in its usual role as a place for aesthetic appreciation, but also becomes a site for religious veneration — that “expansion of comfort zone” curator Rosen mentioned — in order to present the objects in a more authentic context.

Two of the four altars that ground the exhibition will be ritually activated. On Tuesday, Sept. 26, and Wednesday, Sept. 27, practitioner Willie Zapata creates a Cuban Santeria anniversary altar. On Wednesday, Oct. 11, Haitian Vodou priestess Marie Maude Evans will give a lecture, and on Thursday, Oct. 12, she will lead a ritual celebration, open to the public, that will feature drummers and dancers.  

Anticipating the opening and all that has led up to it, Matory says, “I still cannot believe it. Working in the gallery with my colleagues at the Fleming and thinking about this overall experience gives me goosebumps and make me feel slightly breathless.”

The Fleming Museum’s Fall Opening Reception is Thursday, Sept. 28, 5:30-7 p.m. In addition to “Spirited Things,” the museum will also celebrate the opening of “Herbert Barnett: Vermont Life and Landscape, 1940-1948.” Both special exhibitions run through Dec. 15, 2017. 

Source: UVM News

The University of Vermont and Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences have signed an affiliation agreement to provide eligible students with an opportunity to earn a bachelor’s degree from UVM and a doctor of pharmacy degree (Pharm.D.) from ACPHS in a total of seven years. Students seeking both of these degrees typically require eight years to complete the academic requirements of the two programs.

The terms of the agreement are effective beginning with students commencing their undergraduate study at UVM in the current academic year (2017-18), with the earliest anticipated matriculation at ACPHS in the fall of 2020. 

Through this arrangement, UVM students may seek admission to the “3+4” program at the conclusion of their first year of study at the university. If accepted into the program, students will attend UVM for three years and then enroll at the ACPHS Colchester campus for their final four years of study.

Students in the 3+4 program will earn their bachelor’s degree from UVM upon satisfactory completion of their first year at ACPHS. Students will subsequently earn their doctor of pharmacy degree from ACPHS after meeting all of the remaining requirements of the Pharm.D. program. The Pharm.D. is the entry level degree required today to become a pharmacist in the United States.

“Since opening our Colchester Campus in 2009, the University of Vermont and the UVM Medical Center have been great partners of the College,” said Robert Hamilton, Pharm.D., MPH, dean of the ACPHS School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. “We look forward to broadening our relationship through this agreement which will provide qualified UVM students with a clear pathway to a doctor of pharmacy degree, while allowing them to remain in the area and continue enjoying all that northwest Vermont has to offer.”

“This agreement opens a promising new pathway for our undergraduate students to a rewarding professional career,” said Tom Sullivan, University of Vermont president. “The Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences has been a great partner in the past; we look forward to expanding our collaboration and to the exciting new opportunities our students will benefit from as a result.” 

Pharmacists have long enjoyed excellent earning potential and job security, and recent developments in both the profession and the health care system indicate that will continue. The past decade, in particular, has seen a significant expansion of the pharmacist’s role in patient care through the delivery of services that include immunizations, health and wellness testing, management of chronic diseases, and medication therapy management. The expanding scope of practice has also resulted in opportunities for pharmacists in non-traditional settings such as physician offices, ambulatory care clinics, and managed care organizations, further underscoring the increased role that pharmacists are expected to play in helping meet the nation’s health care needs.

Founded in 1881, Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences is a private, independent institution with a long tradition of academic and research excellence. The College opened its Colchester campus in 2009, and it remains the only pharmacy program in the state of Vermont. For more information, please visit www.acphs.edu.

Since 1791, the University of Vermont has worked to move humankind forward. Today, UVM is a Public Ivy and top 100 research university of a perfect size, large enough to offer a breadth of ideas, resources, and opportunities, yet small enough to enable close faculty-student mentorship across all levels of study, from Bachelor’s to M.D. programs. Here, students’ educational experience and activities are enriched by our location — from the energy and innovation of Burlington to the forests, farms, and independent spirit of Vermont. UVM provides students endless ways to explore the world, challenge ideas, and dig in on the most pressing issues of our time.

Source: UVM News

A scientist at the University of Vermont and four of his undergraduate students have discovered 15 new species of “smiley-faced” spiders—and named them after, among others, David Attenborough, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

You won’t find them in Washington, DC, Hollywood, or Vermont—but on Caribbean islands and other southern spots you might now get a glimpse of Spintharus davidattenboroughi, S. barackobamai, S. michelleobamaae, and S. berniesandersi as well as S. davidbowiei and S. leonardodicaprioi.

“This was an undergraduate research project,” says Ingi Agnarsson, a spider expert and professor of biology at UVM who led the new study. “In naming these spiders, the students and I wanted to honor people who stood up for both human rights and warned about climate change—leaders and artists who promoted sensible approaches for a better world.”

The study was published September 26 in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

Why Bernie?

Until now, the beautiful yellow “smiley-faced spiders” in the genus Spintharus —named for a smiley face pattern on their abdomens—has been thought to have one widespread species “from northern North America down to northern Brazil,” Agnarsson says.

However, when a research team from the Caribbean Biogeography Project (“CarBio”)—spearheaded by Agnarsson in UVM’s Biology Department and Greta Binford at Lewis & Clark College—examined spiders from Jamaica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, the Lesser Antilles, Florida, South Carolina, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Colombia—they discovered that one widespread species was actually many endemic species. Using CarBio genetic work, and the Vermont students’ painstaking photography and lab work, the team—with support from the National Science Foundation—was able to identify and formally describe fifteen new species. “And if we keep looking, we’re sure there are more,” Agnarsson said.

Each student who helped describe the spiders also got to name a few of them—and some were named for beloved family members, “but we all named the Bernie Sanders spider,” says Lily Sargeant, one of the students who worked on the project, and who graduated from UVM last year. “We all have tremendous respect for Bernie. He presents a feeling of hope.”

“That spider species will be named after Bernie forever,” says Ben Chomitz, another of the student researchers.

“Our time on this earth is limited,” says Lily Sargeant. “But I think that ideas are not that way. It is my hope that through naming that spider after Bernie we can remember the ideas that he has at this pivotal point in the life of our nation.”

For student Chloe Van Patten, her naming process goes back to what she calls a high school “obsession” with actor Leonardo DiCaprio. “I’m over my crush, but now that he’s involved in environmental issues, I love him even more. So I named a spider after him hoping that if he read our study,” says the recent UVM graduate, “he might go out to dinner with me and talk about climate change.”

Conservation concerns

The Caribbean region has long been known to scientists as a major global hotspot for biological diversity. The leading spider expert on the Spintharus genus in earlier decades, Herbert W. Levi (1921-2014), had concluded that differences he observed in these spiders across a wide swath of geography represented variation within one species. But newer molecular techniques deployed by the project’s leaders, Agnarsson and Binford, show otherwise. “These are cryptic species,” Agnarsson says. “As Dr. Levi’s work clearly showed, they’re hard to tell apart by looking at them.” But the DNA data are clear: these spiders have not been interbreeding—exchanging genes—for millions of years.

“Thoughts about conservation change dramatically when you go from having a common, widespread species to an endemic on, say, Jamaica that has very specific conservation needs,” Agnarsson says.

“All the sudden we have fifteen-fold increase in diversity in this particular group—just because we did a detailed study,” says Agnarsson. “That tells us something about biodiversity in general. The more we look, the more we discover.” Conservation biology, the team notes, fundamentally depends on good taxonomy, since preserving one widespread species is a radically different task than protecting the precise habitat of a genetically isolated, local species.

The Vermont students saw their lab work in a broad cultural light. “I’m a second-generation American and I’m black,” says Lily Sargeant. “It is through a diversity of perspectives that we achieve innovation in science and I appreciate how much the Obamas value diversity.”

“Here’s the thing,” says UVM biologist Ingi Agnarsson, “we need to understand and protect biodiversity in its many forms, and we felt compelled to recognize leaders that understand this.”

Source: UVM News

It’s 2:45 p.m. on Labor Day afternoon, with the remnants of Hurricane Harvey whipping across Lake Champlain, turning the sapphire-blue surface into a froth of whitecaps. An exhausted-looking man cleats his Laser to the dock at the Community Sailing Center, clearly beaten by the aggressive breeze. “Anybody want to sail?” he says, ironically.

“Yes!” says Caroline Patten with no trace of irony. As the coach of the UVM Sailing Team, she’s as game for the big gusts as the thirty-four athletes who’ve been prepping by smearing on sunscreen, gobbling up late-lunch sandwiches, zipping up booties, and securing Helly Hansen gear to help keep the water at bay on this seventy-seven degree day.

On Lake Champlain four days a week from 2:45 until 6 p.m., traveling to four to six regattas on weekends and working out with a trainer two mornings a week, this team is as serious about sailing as Alabama is about football. What it lacks in varsity status, it more than makes up for in conviction, camaraderie, and showing how Catamounts can shine on these double-handed dinghies.

“Every single person on the team is highly competitive and wants to win,” says Lindsay Doyle ’19. “Eat, sleep, homework and sail. Not too much time for anything else, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Out on the water, Patten barks orders for a warm-up drill through a megaphone, circling back on her Boston Whaler to herd two boats that have mistakenly crossed in front of The Spirit of Ethan Allen. A yellow bailer’s gone overboard and bobs along the blue. “Some kids think it’s just a lake and don’t realize how hard it blows,” says Patten, a lifelong sailor who began coaching the team in the fall of 2015 and has since seen the Cats qualify for National Championships, placing seventh in 2015 and 2016; this sport, she says, has many surprises. “It requires a tremendous amount of physical endurance as well as mental.”

Team president Brittney Manning laughs when asked about the typical perception of sailing. “The expensive, ‘Let’s wear white linen and drink cocktails on a nice yacht’ kind of thing?” she says. “We find that comical because we know what we are doing is just as intense as any other sport.” The team does its own fundraising, and will soon be moving into Burlington’s new sailing center after years of working out of containers.

It’s not always this windy on the lake, of course. Dead calm can reign, or rain can, or freezing sleet and snow. Two years ago, Manning was part of a crew that ventured out on February 2 to kick off the spring season, bailing ice out of the boats. 

The payoff is not only results, but also a remarkable sense of place for all members of the UVM Sailing Team. “Champlain is one of the absolute best venues in college sailing,” says Patten, explaining how training inside or outside of the breakwater can simulate a wide variety of conditions on lakes and oceans. “For a big portion of our seasons, there are few other boats on the lake, so it feels like our own personal playground. We also get to see some pretty epic sunsets over the Adirondacks.”

Source: UVM News

When we’re on a diet, we’ll avoid cheeseburgers and ice cream and other foods we love, even though we’re ravenous and hankering for them. Once off the diet, we’ll often return to stuffing ourselves with goodies – even if we aren’t hungry.

We learn self-control while we’re dieting. But a new study by University of Vermont researchers suggests that control of consumption isn’t simply a great act of will power but possibly is guided by the states of hunger and satiety.

During a diet, hunger may become the context in which we learn to deny eating impulses. When we stop dieting and no longer feel hungry, the context vanishes, and we may lose the inclination to restrain our food intake. That’s perhaps a reason why weight regain after a diet ends is so common.

Context matters, explains Mark Bouton, the UVM psychology professor who co-authored the study with his Ph.D student Scott Schepers, scheduled for publication in the journal Psychological Science. For years, he has looked at the importance of context in controlling behavioral and emotional responses.

His research shows that the suppression of behavior or emotion depends upon context – a physical setting, a time period or an internal state such as hunger, mood or the influence of a drug. And the behavior or emotion will “renew” when the context changes or returns to where it was when the response was learned.

For the study, Schepers and Bouton tested rats in two different “contexts” – hungry or satiated. The satiated rats, fed a plentiful amount, could press a little lever to dispense a sweet-fatty pellet, like candy. Even though they weren’t hungry, they chose to press for the treat.

Then, when they were food-deprived for 23 hours a day, the rats didn’t get any pellets when they pressed the lever. Before long, they stopped pressing. They learned to inhibit their food-seeking behavior – but only while they were hungry. When they were satiated again by eating a normal amount of food, they started pressing the lever to get pellets again.

“If you learn to inhibit your behavior when you’re hungry and then are tested in a non-hungry, satiated state, the behavior comes back,” Bouton said. “The real point is hunger and satiety are internal contexts that can control behavior and behavioral inhibition.”

Bouton is collaborating with University of California San Diego researchers who work with obese children. The study teaches the kids to inhibit their craving in the presence of food and food cues, and also studies the role of context.

“You need to practice the inhibition in the context where it’s going to matter,” Bouton says. “You want to learn to control your eating in the presence of all those cues that have been so hard.”

Bouton’s research also could inform treatment of opioid or other drug abuse. He draws parallels between overeating and addiction, alcoholism and smoking – habit-forming behaviors in response to cues, and influenced by context. Drug rehabilitation programs, like diets, create a context for suppressing the behavior, Bouton says, so it’s not surprising that addicts can relapse when they get out of such programs and back to their normal lives.

Bouton, assistant director of UVM’s Neuroscience Graduate Program, specializes in understanding basic learning processes– the development of emotional or behavioral responses in association with certain events or cues. Years ago, he started looking at fear conditioning to understand phobias, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. When rats received an electric shock every time they heard a particular sound, they learned to grow fearful upon hearing that sound. Then, when the sound played over and over without the shock, the fear response subsided, or became “extinguished.”

The clinical psychology practice of exposure therapy works on this concept: By exposing patients again and again to the trigger that makes them scared or anxious, without any harm coming to them, their response gradually subsides. But if the context changes or returns to a previous state, the response can resurface. It’s not erased.

“You can learn things, but as the world changes, we need to be able to change our behavior or change our knowledge,” he said. “We can get rid of the fear, but it comes back really easily.”

Because context is key to controlling behavior, Bouton hopes his work expands the understanding of this concept and sheds light on what causes – and could inhibit – addictive behavior.

Source: UVM News

School officials focused exclusively on bullying prevention efforts might want to consider the findings of a new study showing the highly damaging effects of multiple forms of victimization on school climate.

The study, published in the Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma, measured the impact of polyvictimization – exposure to multiple forms of victimization – on school climate at the middle and high school levels. Results show that bullying, cyberbullying and harassment were significantly associated with decreases in perceptions of school safety, connection, and equity.

Overall, 43.1 percent of students experienced at least one form of victimization during the 2015-2016 schoolyear. Just over 32 percent of students reported being bullied, 21 percent were victims of cyberbullying and 16.4 percent experienced harassment – defined as “experiencing negative actions from one or more persons because of his or her skin, religion, where they are from (what country), sex, sexual identity or disability.”

Based on data from the 2015 Vermont Middle and High School Pilot Climate Survey, the findings highlight the need for comprehensive policies that address all forms of victimization to offset further erosion to safe and equitable school environments, which is tied to educational outcomes.

“For each form of victimization, school climate measures go down precipitously, so if we only center the conversation about kids who are being bullied that limits it to ‘that’s not my kid,’” says study author Bernice Garnett, associate professor in the College of Education and Social Services at the University of Vermont. “But if we change the conversation to bullying can actually damage the entire school climate, then that motivates and galvanizes the overall will of the school community to do something about it.”

Polyvictimization highest among students who identify as female and transgender

Prior research shows that students from vulnerable populations are most frequently victimized. Garnett’s study found that students experiencing polyvictimization were most likely to identify as female and transgender. Students who identified as “multiracial” or “other” also experienced higher levels of polyvictimization than their peers. Additionally, students experiencing polyvictimization were more likely to report doing “worse” academically.

The finding related to students who identify as female and transgender would not have been possible without the addition of a question by the Vermont Agency of Education to the Vermont School Climate Survey that gives students the opportunity to identify as transgender. The finding is unique, according to Garnett, due to the fact that most states, as well as the National Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey, asks about sexual orientation, but not gender identity.

“We asked both to align with how Vermont policy is written and because Vermont schools protect both gender identity and sexual orientation,” says Garnett, who is a member of the committee that designed the Vermont survey. “I wasn’t surprised by the results, because transgender youth experience worse things across the board, but it was surprising to find that this is a reality in Vermont, particularly given all the work that’s been done here.”

Crafting an effective policy response

The National Center for Educational Statistics tracks a number of ways students are victimized ranging from serious physcial attacks to verbal-based assaults. Garnett points out that bullying is motivated by another students real or claimed identity, and if that’s a protected identity, its actually discrimination.

“That’s an important distinction, because current bullying prevention programs focused on teaching students to be nicer or more empathetic would look very different,” seh says. “If a student is targeting someone either implicitly or explicitly because of an identity they were culturally taught not to like, then it changes the conversation to ‘wait, why I am I thinking these thoughts? Why do I hold them? What am I learning from home and the media, and how can I check-in with my assumptions?”

Such prevention efforts would be difficult, if not impossible, to develop without data showing which students are being targeted. A recent study from Columbia University, for example, showed that queer youth living in states where schools enumerate homophobic bullying, experience less victimization. Data differs regionally, however, making it difficult to protect students in places where “people are using identities to target for power,” says Garnett.

“Policies can actually shape the experiences of students in schools,” says Garnett. “This study is trying to show that we need to be thinking about the structural forces that make bullying prevalent among certain groups of kids, which is not a coincidence. The reason why queer youth, English Language Learners, kids with disabilities and overweight kids are targeted is because those are socially acceptable identities to target depending on where you live.”

 

 

 

 

Source: UVM News