Students at Perkiomen High School in Pennsylvania staged a walkout to protest the school board’s decision to allow gender-neutral bathrooms.
Students may now use the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity, not their biological sex.
Those who were involved in the walkout said the issue does not pertain to LGBTQ students, but privacy rights.
“[LGBTQ] rights should be addressed but not at the expense of taking away the rights of the non-LGBTQ students,” a student’s mother explained. “They shouldn’t be asked to give up their right to privacy to accommodate 12 students, especially when the school has three designated bathrooms for these students to use.”
One board member, Jay Cohen, said, “I’m old school. When I went to school there was a door that said boys, and girls, and nobody was there checking people. People knew what they had to do, and they did it, and they got to their classes.”
“Whatever the biological makeup is, use that bathroom, get to your class, the job is done. Let’s get back to educational issues.”
Reporting from The Post Millennial:
According to the Delaware Valley Journal, the board voted on the issue after a father, Tim Jagger, voiced his concern on social media. He alleged that his daughter, a student at Perkiomen High School, was afraid to use the bathroom because of the possibility a male could be in there. The school district told him his daughter could simply use one of the few single-person bathrooms, at which point he took his cause to the board. To his surprise, many of the members were not aware of the existing rules, which allegedly stemmed from a 2018 nondiscrimination policy. As DV Journal reports, one board member who was present in 2018 said he was not aware that the policy would allow students to use the bathroom of their choice.
