The school board in Milford, New Hampshire, considered a proposal banning students from using bathrooms based on their gender identity.
To compromise, the school banned urinals, limiting bathrooms to toilet stalls. Students on both sides of the argument staged a walkout in protest.
The Associated Press reports:
New Hampshire students protest urinal ban in gender debateDozens of students walked out of their New Hampshire school after the district banned urinals in a compromise to a proposal that would have blocked children from using facilities based on their gender identity.The school board decided a few days before the Friday walkout to prohibit students at Milford Middle School and Milford High School from using urinals or shared spaces in locker rooms.The ban in a town of about 15,000 people roughly 35 miles (56 kilometers) from Concord, New Hampshire’s capital, was the culmination of a long debate about district rules about bathroom use and gender identity. District procedures say students can access the bathroom that “corresponds to their gender identity consistently asserted at school.”That procedure still applies. But a proposal that came before the school board called for no longer allowing students to use school bathrooms and locker rooms based on their gender identity. Board member Noah Boudreault said he proposed new restrictions on bathroom use as part of a compromise.“I want to be clear, it was a compromise to both sides of this issue,” Boudreault said. “It was out into effect last week.”Under the new policy, the maximum occupancy for each bathroom and locker room will be capped at the number of stalls it contains. It also prevents students from using shared changing areas.
Here’s a video report from WMUR News:
Here’s more from the Daily Mail:
Superintendent Christi Michaud told the news outlet many students – especially the male students at the high school – expressed their concerns and posed questions regarding the newly imposed bathroom restrictions to members of her team.’They feel as though there wasn’t an issue or a concern here at the high school,’ she said.She said the tighter rules could lead to bathroom bottlenecks and detract from time in the classroom, but said the school personnel are working to comply with the board’s directive.Sixteen-year-old transgender student Nico Romeri spoke at a school board meeting on February 6 urging it to reject the ban.He expressed his concerns that the policies could have a negative impact on the mental health of the district’s LGBTQ students.He said he and other queer students just want to be treated the same as cisgender high school students.’I want my high school experience to be just like everyone else’s just like getting my license, taking biology class, and figuring my life out, not fighting for it,’ the sophomore student said.
When you imagined the future years ago, is this what you pictured? Arguments about bathrooms?
Featured image via YouTube.
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