St. Cloud sees progress against harassment of high school athletes

ST. CLOUD — A few months after the St. Cloud school district doubled down on its plea to the Minnesota State High School League to address harassment at sporting events, the superintendent told school board members she feels the league has made "significant progress" in "creating safe, respectful environments for all participants."

That work includes the league's student-generated code of behavior for students and spectators, as well as a revised position statement on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.

Both are slated to be rolled out in August, St. Cloud Schools Superintendent Laurie Putnam said in an update on harassment concerns to the school board Wednesday.

The harassment — typically slurs that target St. Cloud students for their skin color, religion or gender — has happened when students visit other schools in the Central Lakes Conference for sports events.

Those communities — Alexandria, Brainerd, Cold Spring, Fergus Falls, Sartell, Sauk Rapids and Willmar — are often much less diverse than St. Cloud schools, where about 60% of the nearly 9,500 enrolled are students of color and many are children of immigrants or refugees of East African descent.

These and other statewide incidents of harassment prompted the St. Cloud school board last year to publicly ask the league — the organization overseeing extracurricular activities in more than 500 member schools — to improve inclusivity and work to eliminate abusive and racist incidents. In February, school district leaders again called on the league to show steps toward helping tackle the problem.

"I think we did the right thing in writing the resolution and presenting it to the state high school league. I think it did get their attention," said Al Dahlgren, vice chair for St. Cloud school board.

Erich Martens, executive director of the league, said Thursday that the organization plans more regional meetings next year.

"We found great value in bringing our students together from a variety of schools," he said.

The league has a policy governing student conduct that says students engaging in harassment or violence are subject to ineligibility. The penalty for the first violation is two weeks or two events, whichever is longer, but it's up to local school administration to enforce and it is not tracked by the league.

Martens said the league's bylaws are the minimum penalty for violations.

"Schools are always able to go above and beyond," he said. "If the behaviors are egregious, certainly the penalties can be and should be likely more stringent."

"When we're talking about issues of race or culture or gender or sexuality — those are hard conversations. They're awkward conversations," she said. "And a lot of our districts don't regularly need to engage in those conversations because it's just not necessarily always at the forefront of their experiences."

Natalie Copeland, board member and co-founder of Unite Cloud nonprofit that works to resolve tension around diversity in the St. Cloud area, said working together with other conference schools is going to "be healing for all of central Minnesota."