Randolph school’s locker room gender dispute makes headlines, sparks online debate

A transgender student who was born male but identifies as female has created a stir at Randolph Union High School, causing female student athletes to lose access to their locker room.

Administrators at the school have allowed transgender students to play on opposite-sex teams and use the corresponding facilities for the gender that they identify with. This means biological males may use female locker rooms and vice-versa. But some players on the school’s girls volleyball team have objected to the policy.

Michael Bielawski/TNR

GENDER CONTROVERSY: A bathroom conflict concerning a transgender athlete has materialized at Randolph High School, and now girls are banned from using their own locker room.

School officials are investigating an incident that involved a transgender student using the female locker room. For now, students have been instructed not to use the locker rooms, and it’s not clear when they will be available again.

Student Blake Allen, speaking to WCAX, defended her position against allowing biological opposite genders to use school locker rooms.

“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,” she said.

The school argues that state law protects transgender students’ preference to use any public bathroom or locker room they want.

However, a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling could have implications for bathroom use. The ruling indicates that a First Amendment principle known as the “compelled speech doctrine” means that transgender students cannot force other individuals to accept their beliefs.

“In the spring of 2021, Shawnee State University philosophy professor Nicholas Meriwether won a favorable ruling on appeal in a First Amendment lawsuit against his university,” TheFire.org reports. “In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that Meriweather sufficiently alleged Shawnee State burdened his rights to freedom of speech and religious expression by insisting he refer to a student using feminine pronouns.”

Back in April, Gov. Phil Scott weighed into the transgender debate with a posting on Twitter, encouraging acceptance of those individuals.

Another post, by Twitter user Erin Reed, cited an incident where a father became so upset that a transgender or drag queen might approach his child at school, he made threats of violence.

Polling indicates that the general public is not on board with transgender rights when it comes to bathrooms and locker rooms. A Pew Research poll indicates that significant majority believe transgenders should use the facilities associated with their biological sex.

“The results are from a Pew Research that revealed 64% of respondents approve from protection from housing and jobs discrimination,” WorldNetDaily reports. “But nearly that number, 58%, would require that trans athletes compete on teams aligned with the sex into which they were born, and by a 41%-31% margin would insist trans individuals use “public bathrooms that match the sex they were assigned at birth.”

In Vermont, gender battles have even erupted in violence. “Gay rights activist Fred Sargeant was reportedly assaulted at an LGBT event in Burlington, Vermont, for holding signs critical of the transgender movement, the 74-year-old French-American activist said Sunday on Facebook,” the Daily Caller reports.

Vermont’s transgender facility issues have been making national headlines for at least several years. The New York Times in 2016 reported on another Vermont transgender controversy, then involving bathrooms at Green Mountain Union High School.

“It’s like me going into a girls’ bathroom wearing a wig,” then 15-year-old Tanner Bischofberger was quoted as saying.

Michael Bielawski is a reporter for True North. Send him news tips at bielawski82@yahoo.com and follow him on Twitter @TrueNorthMikeB.

Images courtesy of Orange Southwest School District and Michael Bielawski/TNR

12 thoughts on “Randolph school’s locker room gender dispute makes headlines, sparks online debate

  1. How to screw kids up:

    Pretend that growing-up-dysphoria is really gender dysphoria and if one only changes sex, their problems will be solved.

    Sick is as sick does. When people can’t see that they accuse the other side of being small-minded.

  2. My children’s mother tried to tell them men can have babies and breastfeed. I asked my son, “did i ever breast feed you”? He said “no”. I asked “why not”? He said, “because you dont have boobs”. I said, “exactly “. To that i’ll add men dont have mammory glands, child bearing hips, a uterus, a birth canal, xx chromosomes and so much more. Talk to your kids. Always tell them the truth regardless of your politics. They will love you for that and they will be ok.

  3. It’s flat out abuse to expect girls this age to do such a thing.
    Teenage girls have a whole lot going on at this age and this is the last thing they need.
    They don’t even want their doctor or their own mother seeing them naked- nevermind a strange mentally ill delusional man that feels like a woman.

    This is really about Communism- forcing people to surrender their own personal rights and freedom for what others decide for you is the ‘common good’.
    These girls privacy rights are being violated.

    We need to stop being forced to accept peoples mental illness as normal- then having our rights stripped from us- because THEY are delusional.
    This is what the poll is really saying.
    Further, we are flat out pissed now at this point because we’ve been saying this for years now and the Left refuses to listen..
    America is done with the freak show that the Left is turning this nation into.
    AND you are stripping my rights from me by forcing us all to be “tolerant”, it’s human nature to be intolerant of things we can see or wrong and threatening, it’s also our Constitutional Right.

    We are inching closer and closer to civil war and this right here is just why.. issues like this where everything is indicating that the people do not want this and yet it continues to be forced upon our society.
    Wars happen To Stop Things when we cannot vote our way out of it.

    • Laura- Your first paragraph should convince any compassionate person that this is wrong.
      Your statement: “They don’t even want their doctor or their own mother seeing them naked- never mind a strange mentally ill delusional man that feels like a woman.” Hopefully the males involved are not men, but boys, their contemporaries.
      Your next statement might have been: ..” nevermind a impressionable boy that has been convinced by others that he feels like a girl”.

      • Allen, I have very strong feelings about this topic and how wrong this is.
        I witnessed a scene that I’ll never forget.

        At our local McDonalds one day, as I went to go into the ladies room, I found a very frail elderly gentleman struggling to hold himself upright with a walker standing by the door.
        I asked him if I could help him, I had no idea why he was there.
        He said that he was “watching out for his wife that was scared to be in the bathroom alone if a man walked in”.
        I couldn’t get over this terribly sad scene- that we’ve all been reduced to this.
        I walked this man back to his table and offered to go in there and watch out for his wife, that was also very frail and elderly.

        Just the other day I was peeing in Walmart and I see the two feet next to me facing forward and these were not women’s shoes.
        Imagine my horror to be peeing on the other side of the wall is a man standing there peeing.
        This is just so wrong..
        What these policies look like on paper and what they look like in real life- when it’s your naked teenage daughter dealing with this- they are worlds apart.

        The fact here is that this is not just about children, bathrooms and locker rooms are private spaces where people are in their most vulnerable states..
        The roots here of this outrage is that as it’s essence, women and girls are scared- and to be made scared when all you want to do is pee and know you are okay, this is profoundly wrong.

  4. Homeschool your kids, folks. And that doesn’t mean you have to stay home and teach them yourselves. Do some research. Think outside the box. Be imaginative. Be innovative. Learn a lot. Most of all, be safe. Your children are counting on you.

  5. Who in their right mind would think that you could get a good education in an institution that cannot understand the basics of life? I cannot understand why any parent would allow their child to enter such a place. Students spend 13 years of their formative life in school. Don’t waste those precious years learning ideas that do not work because they are based on lies.

    Think about this statement from the article: … by a 41%-31% margin would insist trans individuals use “public bathrooms that match the sex they were assigned at birth.” Do you really believe sex is determined at birth anymore? We knew our grandchild was a boy months before he was born!

    And what man could honestly say he feels like a woman? He has no way of knowing what is feels like to be a woman. He may have odd feelings, but he has no reason to assign those feelings to feeling like a woman. He simply cannot know, because he never was a woman. And visa-versa. Just confusion to break our society. No more complex than that. It is time to stop the insanity and really help these confused people. Leaving a confused person thinking his or her confusion is good is just wrong.

  6. Girls! Boycott the school. March with signs. Do not sit on your hands and accept this insult. One of you must have a dad who is a lawyer, Sue the school district for a billion dollars ( no one pays attention to millions any more).

  7. Fascinating. In a state that proclaims women’s rights and equality as paramount, women’s rights and equality must be subordinated for an extreme minority to ‘feel safe, welcome, and inclusive’. In this case, the female majority must be subjected to rather misogynistic treatment by the State of Vermont. Equality for women? Seems that concept has been invalidated, at least at Randolph High School.
    I would think Randolph’s School Board should prepare for the inevitable litigation of this debacle.

  8. To try to force teenage girls to change in a locker room with a male present as well as use bathrooms with males is unconscionable. Whatever happened to decency and standards? Why are we all being forced into these situations which are uncomfortable at best and potentially dangerous in order to placate people with mental health problems? Just because a guy says he thinks he’s a girl doesn’t make him a girl any more than thinking I’m a unicorn makes me a unicorn. And in addition, guys don’t belong on girl’s sports teams. Guys play sports with guys and girls with girls. Your “identity “ doesn’t matter; it’s your physical body playing sports(or using the locker room).

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