Students at a high school in Loudoun County, Virginia, staged a walkout in protest of a policy that allows students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of the gender with which they identify.
Loudoun Now reported that the Wednesday protest at Woodgrove High School in Purcellville was organized by some members of the freshmen football team. It was estimated that 50 to 100 students participated, according to The Daily Mail.
The county school district in 2021 voted for nonbinary, gender fluid, and transgender students to be able to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of their choice.
"In the locker rooms in the morning, it's an invasion of privacy, because when men and natural-born males are in our locker rooms, and they are showering in the morning, natural-born females can walk in there as they please," one male high school student told 7News. "And that is not OK. And it goes against what we believe in.
A female student said she stopped using the bathroom at school because of the policy.
"It's a massive safety risk, and they [the Loudoun County Public Schools] don't do anything about it," the student said. "And we express these concerns, and they ignore us and write us off as right-wing crazies. We're not crazy. We just don't want to be in danger on a daily basis in this building.
"I think it's people finally stepping up and just being sick of it. We're sick of being here and just being completely ignored. I stopped using them [the bathrooms] because I don't know what's going to happen to me in there. And people can be like, 'Oh, well, that's paranoid'. I'm telling you right now half the women in this building feel the same way. We don't use the bathrooms. We hold our pee until we can't. I mean, there are girls in PE [Physical Education class] who still get changed in the bathroom stalls in there because they're afraid of who might waltz in."
The school district was asked if it was going to consider reversing the policy as a result of the protest. A spokesman responded: "The Loudoun County School Board is continuing to follow its established process in its review of the latest Model Policies issued by the Virginia Department of Education. Policy 8040 is in review along with the new Model Policies, by the Student Services Committee."
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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