A letter from a high school student has brought the use of sexual slurs between students to the attention of Natrona County High School administrators, district officials said Tuesday .

Seventeen-year-old Patrick Davenport wrote a letter published in the Feb. 27 Star-Tribune outlining his daily experiences at the school.

"In the course of a day, I am witness to well over 100 derogatory comments regarding speculation of someone's sexuality, in the presence of faculty members," Davenport said. "It seems they (faculty) just turn the other cheek and pretend they don't hear anything."

Davenport also said he had water dumped on him, was called obscenities and threatened in front of faculty. Nothing was said or done by the teachers, he wrote.

An NCHS vice principal said she does not believe teachers at the school would fail to report such incidents.

Sexual harassment complaints are taken very seriously by the school, Assistant Principal Chris Bolender said in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon.

School records show that Davenport did not report harassing behaviors but other students had told a teacher. The teacher reported an incident about two weeks ago, she said.

Bolender handles the majority of complaints that are made to the school. She said she investigated the incident and talked with Davenport and the student accused of the behavior.

"I don't believe we have teachers who would hear this and not report it," said Bolender.

Students are the ones who hear the majority of the harassment or name calling, she added.

"Students just need to realize this isn't acceptable," said Davenport in a telephone interview Tuesday. "Not doing anything about it, it's going to continue. If everyone keeps saying, 'Oh it's not a big problem,' it's going to keep happening for years to come."

While the school's administration has not spoken to him about the letter, several teachers have told him they are proud of his efforts, Davenport said.

District policy requires that sexual harassment is discussed with every student and faculty member yearly. The school has training at the beginning of the school year during orientation. Videos and other trainings are undertaken throughout the year for both students and faculty, Bolender said.

Too often students wait to report harassing behaviors or keep the acts to themselves and they don't get addressed, said Principal Byron Moore.

"They need to know they are going to be supported if they report it," he said.

Reports can be made to any staff member or to the school's Natural Helpers student mentors, the principals said.

The Challenger Program, a pilot program based on the Challenge Days system of problem solving and community building, was implemented in the school last week, said Amber Banta-Wellborn with Mercer House.

Natrona County High School is one of three high schools nationwide selected to test the program, she said.

Seventy-two students from all different backgrounds and the various cliques in the school attended the first meeting and pledged they would perform and document at least one act a day designed to stop discrimination and other harassing behaviors, Banta-Wellborn said. Faculty members serve as facilitators to the students in the program.

The program works on ways to build tolerance and to bring a person's attention to their own behavior one action at a time, said Wayne Beatty, the district's Safe Schools administrator.

"Their mission is not to wipe out gay-bashing in the hallways. Their focus is to bring emphasis to the way students treat each other on a number of levels," said Beatty. "Is this one of those levels? Oh yeah. But (discouraging) sexist comments, ethnic, racial comments, all of those kinds of things are part of the overall concept we call tolerance."

Fellow NCHS student Dana Delger said she was a member of the district's Diversity Task Force and the group looked at implementing a gay-straight alliance in the high schools but dropped the idea because it could open the door for hate groups to demand space in the school.

She said Davenport's letter may serve as a starting point to address the problem of sexual discrimination.

"It's a step that we need - that we have to talk about it and people have to know what they're saying isn't OK and that it's not OK to do that," Delger said. "It isn't acceptable to treat people like Patrick poorly, which he is treated, he's treated terribly and so is every other gay student at this school who is open."

Delger said it isn't an NCHS problem or a school problem but a societal problem.

"It's everywhere. It's not just in Wyoming. I think we maybe suffer from it a little bit differently here because we don't have the same kind of a strong gay community that you would see in larger cities," Delger said.

The teachers at the school do try to address the behavior, Delger said. But she said she believes more work needs to be done on educating people about the hurt demeaning statements can cause.

"If you were to use those words about a racial group or about women, and rightfully so, you would be punished." Delger said. "But you can say those things about gay people and there's just no reprimand because it's assumed to be socially acceptable or it's assumed to be benign, when it isn't."