Remember earlier this month when the news broke about a Vermont high school allowing a biologically male student to use the girl’s locker room? Well, there has been a new and disturbing development in this saga. A father who works at the school was suspended for speaking out against the policy after his daughter was made uncomfortable by the male student.
The situation began when the Daily Signal reported that two girls who are members of the Randolph High School’s volleyball team asked the boy, who identifies as a girl, to leave the locker room after he made an inappropriate comment. The school responded by essentially banning girls from the girl’s locker room to cater to the male student’s delusion about his gender identity as it launched an investigation into the matter.
But they were not investigating the conflict. Instead, they are “launching a harassment investigation” into the girls who complained rather than the 14-year-old boy who chose to use their locker room. The Daily Signal spoke with parents whose children attend the school. Predictably, they were outraged that the school would prioritize the biological male over their daughters.
“We allowed a child who is biologically the opposite sex, male, go in a locker room where biologically girls were getting fully changed,” one of the girls’ mothers said. “The biological child was not changing and sat in the back and watched girls getting changed. That made girls feel uncomfortable, made girls feel violated and not protected.”
“When parents and kids went to the school principals they were told it was a law–nothing they could do about it,” she continued. “The law gives them room to protect all and they did not.”
Indeed, state law does allow students to use locker rooms and restrooms corresponding to their chosen gender identity.
The girls are now being forced to share a restroom stall when they wish to change clothes.
But now, the school is taking further action to defend this practice. The Daily Signal reported that Travis Allen, who coaches girl’s soccer at Randolph Union Middle School, was suspended for speaking out about the matter:
Travis Allen has been suspended without pay from his job as the Randolph Union Middle School girls soccer coach, Orange Southwest School District Superintendent Layne Millington said in a Tuesday letter. His suspension follows a Daily Signal report highlighting his daughter’s discomfort at a biological male using her locker room while she was changing.
The superintendent, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Signal, said that Allen was being punished because he “misgendered a transgender student in our district.”
Allen’s daughter is one of the female students who said they were in the high school’s locker room changing when the boy entered.
During an exchange with the boy’s guardian, Allen wrote, “I am the father of the girl you claim ‘made up a story for attention.'”
“The truth is your son watched my daughter and multiple other girls change in the locker room. While he got a free show, they got violated,” he continued, adding, “You think this is fine and dandy. I wonder how you would feel if I watched you undress?”
In a letter, Allen told school officials that he referred to the male student as a “he” on purpose, according to superintendent Layne Millington. She argued that “Such conduct is unprofessional and unbecoming, and flies in the face of the Vermont Principal Association’s athletic regulations, Vermont State regulations, and the RUHS Middle-High School expectations.”
She said school officials have “significant concerns” about the coach’s ability to “support all of our students as the law requires.”
“Allen offered to avoid using gender pronouns while communicating with trans-identifying students and to take down his social media post,” the Daily Signal explained. “But the school district demanded a public apology from Allen, which he refused, resulting in his suspension.”
The coach indicated that he considered offering an apology. But he concluded: “If I say that I’ll apologize, I’ll be able to coach my youngest daughter for the rest of the season, but I’m going to, in turn, hurt my other daughter, because I’m not standing up for what we believe in, I’m just cowing to them like so many other people have done. And I just can’t do that.”
At this point, it is not exactly shocking that a school would go to these lengths to protect its effort to encourage transgender ideology among young children. They are not willing to allow dissent or debate about the matter. Essentially, they intend to send the message that it does not matter if parents are uncomfortable with allowing these incidents to take place.
Other educators and members of school staff have been similarly punished for going against the grain when it comes to gender identity on campus. Some have successfully filed lawsuits against these schools for mistreating these individuals. This is the right move – but we will need more of this if we are going to effectively push back on the effort to trans children.