A high school in Vermont is taking action after receiving complaints from female students over a transgender student using their locker room. The school's response is to ban the girls volleyball team from using their own locker room.
The dispute started, according to a report from the local CBS News affiliate WCAX, when a transgender player allegedly made comments that made some of the other team members uncomfortable.
A Vermont high school has shut down the locker room after girls on the volleyball team complained about having to share the locker room with a biological man identifying as a transgender woman. https://t.co/gJQ3S9VoNM
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) September 30, 2022
Parents were notified by email from the school that reports that the females on the team harassed their transgender teammate were being looked into. While the others are forced to change one at a time in a single-stall restroom, the transgender kid is still permitted to use the locker room during this time.
One student decided to speak out.
“It’s a huge thing. Everyone’s asking, ‘So, why aren’t you allowed in the locker room?'” Blake Allen, a member of the volleyball team, told reporters. “My mom wants me to do this interview to try to make a change. I feel like for stating my opinion — that I don’t want a biological man changing with me — that I should not have harassment charges or bullying charges. They should all be dropped.”
Allen continued by saying that none of the other females on the squad had a problem with the transgender student playing with them or even with him or other people who are still biologically male using the female restrooms. Their only disagreement stemmed from the fact that they frequently all changed clothes in the same locker area.
“There are biological boys that go into the girl’s bathroom but never a locker room,” Allen explained. She also said that the school’s temporary fix — having all of the girls use one single-stalled restroom while the transgender student had access to the locker room — made no sense to her.
“They want all the girls who feel uncomfortable — so pretty much 10 girls — to get changed in a single stall bathroom, which would take over 30 minutes. Where if one person got changed separately, it would take a minute, like no extra time,” Allen explained, arguing that it made much more sense for the one transgender student to change in the bathroom.
