The Ames School Board voted 4-3 Monday night to change Ames High School’s harassment policy to include sexual orientation.

Prior to the meeting, the policy covered harassment based on a student’s age, sex, race, color, religion, disability, ethnic or national origin or marital status.

“I really thought it would pass a lot easier than it did,” said Gina Russell, junior at AHS. “Adding sexual orientation to the policy was a sticky point for a while.”

Both Iowa State and City of Ames codes already include sexual orientation in their harassment policies. Schools in the greater Des Moines area also have similar policies and West Des Moines schools are working on changing theirs, Russell said.

Ames High Associate Principal Mike Avise said these other policies helped Russell, 17, in her endeavor to get the AHS policy changed.

“My opinion is that regardless of what the policy says, the actions the students are concerned about have no place in the building anyway,” Avise said.

Russell said she was happy to see the change finally come about since she was one of the students who initially brought it to the attention of Deputy Superintendent W. Ray Richardson.

“Ever since I founded the gay alliance at school when I was a freshman, it has been our group’s goal to see this policy changed,” she said. “We felt that it was a glaring omission from the harassment policy.”

The AHS gay alliance group, Spectrum, only had a few meetings in its first year, but Russell said it started making strides last year.

“We started sending out letters and getting into contact with officials to get things done,” she said.

Although Russell no longer is president of Spectrum, she still is in charge of special projects, such as changing the school’s harassment policy.

Russell and the members of Spectrum had support in their mission from Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. She also said the minister from Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames, 1015 Hyland Ave., spoke on behalf of the group at a board meeting.

The harassment policy, which was first up for review by the school board on March 1, already was scheduled to be reviewed this year. Each school policy comes up for review every three years.

Although the policy change is “the first step of solving the problem of gay kids being safe in Ames,” Russell said she definitely doesn’t see it as a solution.

“It makes me feel a lot safer in my community,” she said. “My friends in Des Moines have been shot at or beaten up over this, and though it hasn’t happened here, I don’t want to see it happen either.”