Empirical report shows why LGBTQ+ youth continue to leave MOV

With so much of the Mid-Ohio Valley continuing to see dwindling numbers in younger people in the LGBTQ+ community stay, many are wondering what's the cause of this. Which is why Out MOV board member, Danielle Thrasher, chose to look into this situation even further with a research paper that she had done at the end of her time at Washington State Community College.

She went surveying those that were ages 13-18 in the Mid-Ohio Valley asking them questions of how they are treated in the region. Many questions ranging from how they have been discriminated against to asking if they are comfortable living in this area.

A lot of the findings she found showed that many of these students felt uncomfortable and had been bullied whether it be at school (52.4 percent) or online (51.4 percent). It also shows that in over three-fourths of these instances a school faculty/staff member did not intervene in the bullying that was occurring.

And because of this, many of the children (69.4 percent to be exact) that were surveyed in this study said that they would likely to more than likely leave the Mid-Ohio Valley because of feeling unwelcomed.

Thrasher attributes a lot of these feelings of the youth to a lot of the discrimination that goes on from people being evicted from homes or refusal to be serviced by a shop owner because of a person's sexual identity.