Prom.
The Christmas dance.
The Pops concert in the spring.
Homecoming.
The life of a high school student is marked not just in classes and tests, but in rites of passage, events every student participates in and will remember for the rest of their lives. Twenty years later, most people can tell you how they spent Homecoming week their senior year; these are memories that last a lifetime.
Last year there was a bit of a hullabaloo when Constance McMillen, a high school student in Mississippi, had the audacity to suggest that she should be able to come to her high school's prom...with her girlfriend. This time it's happening in my backyard. 17-year-old Oakleigh Reed, a student at Mona Shores High School in suburban Muskegon, had the audacity to run for Homecoming King...but Oakleigh is transgendered, so the school district is flipping their collective shit.
According to the WOOD-TV article, when the student Homecoming committee discovered Oakleigh was getting votes for Homecoming King they immediately alerted their advisors, who put a stop to the vote tabulation. "Mona Shores Principal Jennifer Bustard said rumors that Oakleigh got enough votes for king are untrue. There is no way to know because they stopped counting Oakleigh's votes."
The derision in Bustard's voice is palpable: "He, as I use the pronoun correctly out of respect, is not a boy." In other words, she's being politically correct in referring to Oakleigh as a boy because she has to, not because she believes Oakleigh is entitled to it. When it was suggested that Oakleigh, a 17-year-old with joy and passion in his eyes, be allowed to participate in Homecoming as a full member of his high school's community on his terms, the administration of Mona Shores High School spit back vitriol.
Jennifer Bustard and her staff didn't just fail to fulfill Oakleigh's civil rights. They failed in their jobs as educators. They failed in their duty as high school staff: ensuring that each and every one of their students are allowed to grow into their full potential, that every possible door of opportunity is open, to ensure that each and every one of their students is treated equally, with dignity, respect and tolerance.
Bustard and her staff would do well to take a break from educating their students and instead educate themselves. Start here with a series of blogposts at DailyKos by Rei, a transgender woman who has written the most beautiful and eloquent dictation of a journey much like Oakleigh's: from terrified and awkward high school student to empowered and successful adult. As my friend Ryan put it, it's "required reading for humanity."
The ACLU is involved in Oakleigh's situation now, and I'll be watching with interest to see what happens. I went to high school at Reeths-Puffer High School across town from Mona Shores, and until the Seaway Conference dissolved they were our crosstown rivals. It'd be nice to spend Homecoming weekend thinking about football and not identity politics.