Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Wyoming teaches tolerance a year after Shepard's death

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Sunday, October 10, 1999

Wyoming teaches tolerance a year after Shepard's death
Public school program focuses on bullying, university sets anti-discrimination policy as McKinney's trial begins
By Robert W. Black
Associated Press

   LARAMIE, Wyo. - A banner hanging from the University of Wyoming Student Union billows gently in the fall breeze. Its message, set between green circles on a yellow background: "Remember Matthew Shepard."
   It was just more than a year ago that Shepard, a gay college freshman, was beaten and left to die on the freezing prairie. Since then, the town has kept Shepard in the forefront in its search for ways to foster greater tolerance of gays.
   Public schools have changed their conflict-resolution classes to focus more on preventing bullying, and harassment of homosexuals in particular. At the University of Wyoming, where Shepard was studying political science, education students are learning how to teach tolerance.
   "Most of our faculty were really appalled, had trouble believing it could happen here, and some went into denial," said Charles Head, superintendent of Laramie schools. "But they recognized that it did happen here and we had to address that."
   The alleged ringleader in the attack on Shepard goes on trial for murder on Monday, which also happens to be National Coming Out Day and the beginning of Gay Awareness Week.
   Aaron McKinney, 22, could get the death penalty if convicted. His alleged accomplice, Russell Henderson, 22, pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence. He has been subpoenaed to testify in McKinney's trial.
   Shepard, 21, was lured from a bar, driven out of town, robbed of $20, tied to a fence, pistol-whipped into a coma and left to die on Oct. 8, 1998, allegedly because he was gay. A bicyclist who found him nearly hidden in the sagebrush 18 hours later at first thought the slight, 5-foot-2 Shepard was a scarecrow.
   Many of Laramie's 26,000 residents felt the town was unfairly portrayed as a rural, homophobic outpost. But they were also troubled by the fact that McKinney and Henderson were homegrown.
   "I kind of doubt if sexual orientation was being addressed to any real degree prior to this tragedy, and I'm reasonably certain that it is being addressed as we speak," Head said.
   At the university, President Philip Dubois asked trustees to make certain that every campus policy statement bans discrimination based on sexual orientation.
   The school also plans to raise $1.5 million to endow the Matthew Shepard Chair of Civil Liberties.

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