ANDERSON, Ind. (AP) – A Ball State University survey of about 150 Indiana high school counselors has found that many are ill equipped to help gay or lesbian students who are being teased by classmates.

A lack of training can explain why counselors and teachers sometimes fail to act to help gay or lesbian students, said Marty Wood, an associate professor at Ball State who released his survey findings last month.

“I think a lot of it is not deliberately hostile on the part of teachers; part of it is that they don’t know what to do. So, rather than do something, they just kind of sweep it under the rug,” Wood told The Herald Bulletin.

His survey found that about 15.8 percent of about 150 respondents said they were very competent addressing the needs of gay and lesbian students. Some 57.9 percent said they were moderately competent, and 26.3 percent said they were not very competent.

About 80 percent said they had dealt professionally with gay or lesbian students.

Marianne Julius, who has been a counselor at Lapel Junior-Senior High School for 28 years, said it’s been at least a year since a student approached her to discuss gay or lesbian issues. She said those issue weren’t discussed much during her college career.

Elwood High School counselor Phil Huffman said he also had little training in counseling gay and lesbian students when he graduated from Ball State in the early 1970s.

“The only thing they told us was: ‘If you don’t feel comfortable with it, don’t do it.’” he said.

Huffman said he usually sticks to academic counseling for Elwood’s 610 students. “I haven’t dealt with those kind of issues in quite a while,” he said.

Pendleton Heights High School senior Ashley Ford said she grew so fed up with classmates’ anti-gay comments that she and three other students formed Spectrum, a gay-straight alliance, at the school last school year.

Ten to 15 students attended the meetings last year, and the group held a Day of Silence, when about 40 students didn’t speak all day to represent the silence homophobia can mean for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

“I have just seen so much negativity toward the gay community in my school,” said Ford, 18. “I just thought it was really rude, especially how some of the teachers in the school would let it slide. They wouldn’t say anything about it.”

Pendelton Heights guidance counselor Mike Taylor, who helped the students form Spectrum, said the school treats harassment directed at gay and lesbian students similarly to other sexual harassment.

“When you come out with something different – if your hair is different, if your clothes are different, if your sexual orientation is different – you’re a target,” he said.