Dozens of students and parents participated in a walkout at an Oregon high school last week to protest school policy allowing boys to use girls bathrooms and locker rooms.
The student-led event took place at Roseburg High School on October 8. Boys and girls alike left their seventh period class to join a crowd of supportive adults outside. They lined the street outside the school, waving signs proclaiming girls’ right to privacy.
“Honk to support our girls privacy,” one sign read.
“This all ends when enough of us say no,” proclaimed another bright orange marker.
Shannon Miller helped her daughter, Keyleigh, organize the walkout after Roseberg allowed a transgender-identified boy to change in the locker room.
Shannon told journalist Rick Dancer she met with the high school’s principle after learning two boys had been using the girls bathroom and locker rooms. The administration agreed to ask both male students if they would be willing to use the school’s private changing stalls and gender-neutral bathrooms.
One student agreed. The other continued using girls facilities.
The school told Shannon nothing else could be done because Oregon law prohibits discrimination based on gender identity in public schools. The administration suggested Kyleigh and other young women uncomfortable with boys in their bathrooms and locker rooms use the private facilities instead.
Multiple students say the private bathrooms are located in an auxiliary building and require a teacher to unlock the doors.
Roseburg High’s argument about upholding Oregon law is a cop-out.
True, the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) claims state antidiscrimination law protects students’ “right” to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their subjective gender identity, rather than their biological sex. It warns preemptively ordering transgender-identified students to change in a private area could be considered discrimination.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most left-leaning appellate courts in the country, affirmed ODE’s interpretation of Oregon law in 2020.
But policies and verdicts like these defy federal guidance on Title IX, which requires federally funded educational programs to segregate sports, bathrooms and locker rooms by sex. The federal government is working to withhold federal education funding from Oregon and several other states with laws that contradict Title IX.
Less than two weeks ago, the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services ordered Minnesota to revise policies allowing boys to compete in girls’ sports in public schools, noting, “To the extent state law conflicts with Title IX, federal law preempts state law.”
The Department of Education launched an investigation into ODE for Title IX violations in July.
Shannon and Kayleigh Miller say Roseburg High’s position proves women have fewer rights in Oregon than transgender-identified men.
“[The school] is telling me the state law says that those who identify as the other gender have essentially more rights than Kyleigh … and every other girl in Oregon — or boy, if this was flip-flopped,” Shannon told Dancer.
“I take that to mean these transgender-identified students’ right to be comfortable and to feel safe and to have privacy is more important than the rest of the students’ at Roseburg High.”
Students at the walkout seemed similarly fed-up with the school’s inaction.
“We just want to create a safe environment for all of us,” one student told a reporter. “When [boys] come into the [girls’ locker room] … it creates a dangerous place for us [girls], because there’s no one in those bathrooms making sure we are going to be safe.”
Locker rooms had similarly lax supervision, another student claimed.
The students demonstrated enormous courage to stand up for themselves in a school, district and state that routinely labels girls with expectations of privacy “transphobic,” “bigoted” or “discriminatory.”
Their participation is even more impressive given the school allegedly tried to quash the walkout. Students say the administration threatened to cancel homecoming and hand out detentions and suspensions.
Video of an administrative meeting following the walkout shows an adult reading written remarks from a student who wished to stay anonymous for fear of retaliation.
“[Admin at Roseburg] made it pretty clear they felt the need to scare children today about the walkout,” the adult commented.
The anonymous student’s story is at once ridiculous and heartbreakingly familiar. She doesn’t want to wear her nice school clothes to weight training, but she also doesn’t want to change out in front of a boy.
“Why do grown adults keep putting young girls in one of the most awkward, uncomfortable, unbearable situations?” she asks in the letter, concluding:
If [I] can’t even hold a guy’s hand because [I’m] too scared, then having a guy be in [my] locker room watching [me] dress in a bra and underwear scares [me] even more.
The brave students who participated in the Roseburg High walkout deserve the highest praise for taking a risk in service of what is right. Advocates for biological reality everywhere should be taking notes.
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