Trans Girl Forced to Sit in Hallway as Students Seek Shelter During Active-Shooter Drill
PoliticsIn addition to being subjected to the trauma of preparing for a mass shooting at school, one trans student in Virginia was further humiliated when teachers failed to guide her to safety, instead making her wait alone in the hallway during the scenario on account of her identity.
Media outlets reported on the incident after LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Stafford wrote about it in a Facebook post, alleging that at the beginning of the drill, teachers in one Stafford County Public School directed children to bathrooms or locker rooms closest to them, but couldn’t decide where to send the girl, who is trans. “The student was forced to watch the adults charged with her care, debate the safest place (for the other students) to have her shelter,” the post stated.
As they debated, the girl was asked to sit in the gym with a teacher, and was later taken to the locker room hallway, away from the other students. “During an event that prepares children to survive an attack by actual assailants, she was treated as if she was so much of a danger to peers that she was left exposed and vulnerable,” the group wrote.
At a Stafford School Board meeting Tuesday, a friend of the girl’s family, Joni Wilson, read a letter written by the girl. “If there was someone armed in my school, I would have been the first one gone,” she wrote. “I felt like an afterthought. If the whole thing wasn’t bad enough, the embarrassment caused me to have a panic attack in front of everyone.”