High School Will Have Gender-Neutral Homecoming
The Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School’s Student Government Association voted 4–1 to make their Homecoming Court gender-neutral, allowing students to vote for two people regardless of their gender to become the school’s “royalty,” the Washington Post reports.
Those who win the title will be asked if they’d like to be introduced as king, queen, or royalty before being announced at halftime during the school’s homecoming game. “What student leaders are doing is a step to help ensure that all students have a sense of belonging at B-CC,” principal Donna Redmond Jones told the Post. She believes this inclusivity adds to the event without dismissing the titles some students might still traditionally appreciate.
“It provides an opportunity for all students to be involved in something that was exclusionary,” B-CC SGA President Jacob Rains elaborated: “It is really not our job, especially with a gender-neutral and transgender population at B-CC, to tell people that boys have to be kings and girls have to be queens. Who are we to put people into those categories?”
Though the reaction to the announcement has been generally positive, Rains wrote a slew of tweets apologizing to the school’s general population about not explaining the decision-making process more clearly just hours after the announcement:
“Overjoyed” B-CC senior Nadia Gaylin told the paper this decision “is so huge and can honestly change lives." Cathy Scaeff, the mother of transgender student Aiden Rivera Schaeff, a student who transitioned from female to male at B-CC and then killed himself because he was being bullied, also said monumental changes like these need to be made at schools everywhere, “in a systemic way that supports everybody.”
The SGA announced the addition of another gender-neutral bathroom to the school's third floor that day as well.
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