commissioner achtenberg. >> thank you? mr. guerre. you stated that the issue of harassment is primarily a local matter. i'd like to follow up on that a little bit. my understanding is that there are at least 44 anti-bullying, harassment laws at the state level. there are scores of ordinances to the same effect. there are hundreds of statutes that deal with the underlying acts that might otherwise qualify as harassment or bullying, such as laws against battery, assault, stalking, what have you. what evidence is there that state and local authorities are either incompetent, incapable, unwilling or don't have the resources to handle this matter? and could you give us an example of how the office for civil rights adds value or can do something better than can be done than the state and local level to address the issue? >> so, education writ large primarily is a local issue. as i mentioned, and as the secretary often says, on we can't be a transformational change that our schools need to undergo from washington alone. our guidance was not

. >> the chair recognizes the acting director followed by commissioner achtenberg. >> my question is for mr. marcus. regarding religion, what do you say to the suggestion that your 2004 guidance and current department of education guidance on title iv simply bootstrap currently unprotected group into title six protection? to be leer in your answer, give us examples of types of religious-based harrassment and bullying which today would not be covered under title six until ex-police italy expanded to include religion? explicitly. >> thank you i will start with the section part of your question, i would say under current law that i believe that, discrimination against a religious group that lacks ethnic characteristics is not covered. now i'm not sure that i would want to go through on a case-by-case basis about all of the different religious groups but there are some religions that do not claim any sort of ethnic or ancestral particularty but rather more a universal characteristic and i think that is a large percentage of the students in the united states who do not belong to such a re

. >> we'll have toll hurst involved by commissioner heriot, commissioner achtenberg for her follow-up questions and i'll indicate who will follow up after this. >> this is for professor herek and meyer. i've read both your written statements and i should thank the panelists for providing a great deal of reading material. you address the bullying and the social stigma on it has a greater impact on teens than more general forms of bullying. you were both addressing lgbt students. would you say the same holds true for students bullied based on their race, religious, disability or gender? >> well, at least one of the studies that i cited was from the california healthy kids study did look at those other factors and, yes, the comparison was between kids who had been bullied based on their sexual orientation, perceived or actual, versus kids who were bullied for reasons that weren't related to identity, and there was -- there we saw the difference, my recollection of that study is that they did find other -- that being targeted as a member of a particular group, racial group, for example, i