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Graphic “dating” survey given to high school students in Andover, Mass. Crude questions on sexual experience, homosexuality, criminal assault, and more. Outraged parents confront school officials.

Survey answers have potential for subpoena against students, says local lawyer.

MassResistance bill to protect students & parents from intrusive surveys filed in Mass. Legislature -- but still in committee

POSTED: March 6 2016

High school and middle school students across the country continue to be subjected to crude, graphically sexual, psychologically intrusive, and privacy-invading surveys, without parents knowledge or consent. In addition, as MassResistance reported last May, these surveys are unscientific, present a distortion of reality, and are apparently designed to change children’s attitudes and beliefs (rather than measure them).

This latest incident took place last Monday (Feb. 29) in Andover, Mass. According to press reports, local parents were outraged when their kids came home describing the questions they had been asked on the survey.

The survey included questions about sex practices, homosexual behavior, criminal behavior including assaults (and sexual assaults) they may have committed, alcohol and drug use, moral values about sex, their grades, whether they get school-subsidized lunches, depression, and other intrusive questions. One question plants the seeds of “gender identity” doubt. Although this was given to high school kids, it appears to be intended for children as young as 13.

Here’s a sample of the questions:

Read the entire survey HERE

Several upset parents immediately called the school. School officials told them that they understood the survey was to research “healthy dating relationships for teens,” but said they hadn’t personally looked at the survey questions. One School Committee member said “I don’t know what our current policy is with respect to surveys, so we should look at that.”

Radical origin

According to the press report, this survey was created by a department at the University of New Hampshire. It is part of a national program funded by the Obama Justice Department  promoting the “campus rape culture” myth, and is called “Bringing in the Bystander.” People from the university are traveling to 30 high schools in Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire to administer the survey to students.

Mixed messages from the school

School officials also claimed that parents had submitted “opt-in” permission for their children to take the survey. However, the “opt-in” took place a year ago, and at the time parents were told that it was to participate in a program on healthy dating relationships. But they were not told that it included a survey with these kinds of questions, according to parents interviewed by the local newspaper.  

But on Monday the survey was simply made available during a lunch period to any student who wished to take it, whether or not their parents had signed anything.  The school principal acknowledged that the “participation was voluntary” on the part of the students. The university people even had a table set up where they gave cookies and baked goods to students who decided to take the survey.

Fifth Amendment issues

It was particularly upsetting to parents that students were being asked to admit to criminal activity, such as assault and even sexual assault, as well as alcohol and drug use.

One local candidate for School Committee, Bob Pokress, told the newspaper that he consulted a lawyer about it who confirmed that the surveys could be subpoenaed “if legal actions ever took place against the student, and these answers could be used against them.”

Although the students don’t write their names on the survey, they are asked for specific personal information from which it is possible to identify them.

An uphill battle inside the schools

Why do so many schools to these potentially damaging things to students and their parents?

Our experience has been that school officials are overwhelmingly very left-wing, and instinctively don’t trust parents to raise their children “properly.” They support these kinds of intrusive surveys, the same way they support “comprehensive sexuality” education and the various homosexual/transgender programs that have permeated the schools. It’s only occasionally, when confronted by angry parents, that they will temporarily back off from them.

Help MassResistance stop this outrage against parents and children

MassResistance has filed bill H382 in the Massachusetts Legislature that require written permission from parents before students are given a wide range of abusive, intrusive surveys. And it would force schools to let parents see the surveys beforehand. See description of the bill here.

At the bill’s public hearing last May, parents stunned and shocked the Education Committee with graphic testimony on what their children have already been subjected to. One State Rep, a native of Cambodia, said it reminded him of what the Communists had done to people back there! The testimony was even reported on local television and in talk radio the next day.

We are fighting hard to get this bill passed – and we believe it can happen this session. If you can help in any way – even calling from home (even if you live out of state) – by all means contact us.