November 3 – In Loudoun County, VA, high school students took it upon themselves to protest a school board decision about bathrooms.
On Wednesday, students at Woodgrove High School in Purcellville, VA, walked out of class because they were tired of sharing bathrooms with the opposite sex.
In 2021, the Loudoun County School Board in a 7-2 vote adopted a policy that allows transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice. It also requires teachers and staff to address students by the pronouns of their choice.
The new policy has upset a number of students and the walk-out occurred.
Attorney Clint Barkdoll said, “Some of the reporting on this is that the kids that walked out are just furious at all of these ongoing accommodations that are being made for what amounts to just a handful of kids. This has been boiling, of course, for quite a while in Loudoun County. They’ve had all sorts of problems down there. This walkout, though, in some ways is a big deal because it was a large number of students. The reporting I’ve seen is roughly 100 students. They’re citing that this is a safety risk, that they do not feel comfortable that the school board is making the bathroom accommodations. So these kids that are walking out there saying they’re in the locker room or the bathroom, and people of the opposite sex are being allowed in there to change and do whatever else. It remains to be seen now what the school board will do about this? They certainly are not going to tolerate walkouts happening every day at their schools, but what comes of this? Will there be now some concession made to peel back that transgender bathroom policy?”
Michele Jansen of NewsTalk 103.7FM noted, “I liked the quote from one of the girls, she said we’re sick of being here and just being completely ignored and she’s right. I’m so tired of the word inclusive. Inclusive means censorship. Inclusive means ignoring the majority or what’s perceived as the privileged and then giving all kinds of accommodation to the perceived oppressed. Hmm, kind of like the protests we’re hearing about Israel and Palestinians, but the point being this is an ideology that crosses all lines to say inclusion means you can do anything to the majority and it doesn’t matter. So you can do anything to the majority in the United States if they follow the tradition of actual male, female, female protected spaces being exclusive, which is cross cultures and now all of a sudden allowed activist group LGBTQ as an ideology comes in and says no, you have to pretend that we’re all gender fluid, and anybody can state they belong to the opposite sex and they have to be listened to and accommodated. My big problem with all of this is that there is no standard definition for who falls into that category. So any boy really can get access to female spaces now and they’re right, that does put them in danger.”
Barkdoll added, “I saw another quote from one of the parents saying, how about the majority? Where are our rights in these situations? This parent was just making the point that it seems like the school board has gone so overboard to accommodate this small handful of students, it truly has infringed on the rights then of everyone else in a detrimental way to the point that they’re actually citing safety issues. So this will be an interesting story to watch as we know there have been problems in Loudoun County, not just this issue, but other issues related to their school there. What’s the board going to do about this? Certainly, they’re not going to tolerate walkouts on a regular basis of students protesting this. So it’ll be really interesting to see what they do.”
Pat Ryan of NewsTalk 103.7FM suggested, “It’s going to take a spine is what it’s going to take and you’ve got elections coming up and you need a spine. The fraction of a fraction needs to be recognized, but we don’t have to upset every freaking thing. Let’s just hope that we get some spines and some adults that aren’t so wishy-washy, weak and double degreed liberals out in the suburbs who think they know better than you, because they don’t.”
