Joey Aguirre

jaguirre@gannett.com

Bullying exists, and some area students believe it's becoming more of a problem because of the presidential election.

A roundtable discussion on the subject was held after school Friday between 10 parents, teachers and students from counties all across the metro at the East side branch of the Des Moines Public Library.

The 40-minute discussion was sponsored by Hillary for Iowa. The dominant theme of the conversation was that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's campaign is negatively impacting Iowa children and schools.

After the discussion, Grinnell College third year student Austin Wadle, who is president of the College and Young Democrats of Iowa, told The Register bullying is an issue, and that his college has taken its own steps to be more inclusive.

Wadle said the smartphone app "Yik Yak" — which allows users to post anonymously — was blocked on the campus wifi after a slue of aggressive racial, gender and homophobic comments were posted.

He said there's also someone in town riding around in the vehicle with a confederate flag, yelling racial and homophobic slurs.

"And it's only increased this year," Wadle, 20, said. "And I think that's because of Donald Trump legitimizing those sorts of actions in a really scary way."

Ellie Konfrst, who's a junior at Roosevelt High School, and Sydney Uhlman, a sophomore at Carlisle High School, are the Chair and Vice Chair for the High School Democrats of Iowa group.

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They agree that there's more bullying online.

"The biggest thing I've seen is personal issues between people being blown out of proportion and then people ganging up on someone," Konfrst, 16, said. "I see that a lot. And lots of people with confederate flags — that's upsetting every time you see it. That's something that definitely plays into the relationships at school."

Uhlman said Carlisle doesn't have a very diverse student population and because of that, she says some people haven't had much experience in dealing with others who have a different sexual orientation or gender identity.

"They think that makes it ok to say very hateful things because (they believe) we don't have kids like that," Uhlman,16, said.