High school students at a New York high school staged a massive walk-out protest this week in opposition to the district’s attempts to force them to share restrooms with the opposite gender, in the name of “transgender” acceptance.
Breitbart reports that the Wappingers Central School District, which oversees John Jay High School and other campuses, is set to allow students to choose whichever restrooms they want to use, rather than assigning them on the basis of their actual gender.
The protest consisted entirely of students who do not support the policy, with one student, Shauna Neilan, saying that “a bunch of people from our school, John Jay, feel uncomfortable.”
“We want to change that and give them their own spaces to make us more comfortable and them more comfortable,” she added.
In response, a small counter-protest was also held consisting mostly of adults.
Whereas the original protest was organic and organized by the students, the counter-protest was manufactured by the far-left group Defense of Democracy, which describes its goal as being to “educate the public about the value of inclusivity and the importance of emotional and physical safety for all individuals within the American public-school and library systems.”
A petition had previously been circulated among the students claiming that several incidents involving so-called “transgender” students had taken place in the school’s bathrooms.
The petition has since been deleted.
District Superintendent Dwight Bonk claimed to be unaware of any such incidents, and said in a statement that “we are going to continue to provide a safe environment for all of our students. And all means all, each and every one of them.”
New York State currently has laws in place ordering public school districts to provide any and all “transgender” students with access to the restroom of their choice.
Bonk cited this law as part of the reason for the district’s new policy, saying that “we want to support all of their rights, but we’re also going to be following the proper protocol that we are responsible for following.”
The superintendent also threatened the students who participated in the protest, declaring that they will soon have to undergo conduct-related conversations.