This story by Darren Marcy first appeared in the White River Valley Herald on Oct. 13.
RANDOLPH — Powerful and raw emotions filled the Randolph Union High School auditorium Tuesday night as about 350 people turned out for a community discussion over a transgender student’s use of the girls locker room.
For close to two hours, one speaker after another strode to the front of the auditorium to speak into a mic and share their thoughts about the 14-year-old girl who is a member of the girl’s volleyball team at RUHS.
The issue came to light when television station WCAX ran a story at the end of September after interviewing one member of the volleyball team. WCAX has since removed the story from its website. The transgender girl, whom the Herald is not naming because she and her family have had threats made against her, reportedly walked into the girl’s locker room — which she is allowed by school and district rules and state law to do — and was told to leave, which she did, according to school officials.
To open the evening on Tuesday, Superintendent Layne Millington of the Orange Southwest Supervisory District presented the facts of the situation, which he said had been distorted. Millington said the locker room incident is “a school matter that the school deals with privately as required by law.”
Since the initial story spread through the media and social media, the school’s voicemail and email has been turned into a cesspool of transphobic threats.
The superintendent shared some of the social media posts via a slide show and played voicemails filled with violent, profane language threatening violence to school leaders.
Most of those, Millington said, are the result of out-of-state groups that have engaged after the story was picked up by national media.
The school’s website was also defaced, with a transphobic message and profanity displayed. The site has been taken down.
All of the messages and actions are now being investigated by the FBI, Millington said.
But in the auditorium, the crowd was respectful. Applause from each side erupted when a speaker made a point the crowd agreed with, but everyone stayed civil and polite.
There was no shouting or interrupting from either side other than shouts of support when a speaker would break down in tears or struggle to find the right words.
None of those speakers was as powerful as the volleyball team captain, senior Lilly Patton, who received a standing ovation from the crowd as she broke down back at her seat.
“I just want you to remember that we’re children,” Patton said, referring to her 14-year-old teammate. “It’s one child on the receiving end of all this hate. You’re saying all these things to a child who is already at high risk, who already doesn’t feel accepted. This child didn’t do anything to anyone, especially you adults. I was there. She was where she was supposed to be.”
Patton’s schoolmate, Evan Brownell, a sophomore, said all the noise related to the issue was causing stress in the school.
“The amount of anxiety this has caused is mind-boggling,” Brownell said. “I’m not on either side of the debate because it’s not my business. If the situation is not directly affecting you, there really shouldn’t be an opinion. We need to come together.”
And Sierra Bond, a junior at RUHS, said the concern should be for the girl who is being affected most.
“I hear a lot of people worrying about the safety of their daughters,” Bond said, adding that the issue is affecting a lot of students at the school but none more than the student herself.
And senior Quinn Gallant, who identifies as a heterosexual male, told the crowd, “I used to be proud of where I went to school.”
“There are people I love in the LGBTQ community,” he said. “It’s hard for them to know where I go to school. It’s important we stick together. It’s important that everyone feels love. I just really feel sad.”
The students had support from teachers and parents as well.
Nora Skolnick, a teacher at Randolph Elementary School, told the students the teachers were there for them.
She said she knew the fear they faced. As a woman married to a woman, she had lived it.
Skolnick said students need to feel safe and the situation has done just the opposite.
“We, your teachers, see you, respect you, and you deserve better,” Skolnick said. “You deserve to feel safe when you come to school. No one should have to hide who they love or who they are, or be bullied because of it.”
Several speakers addressed the high rates of substance abuse and suicide by transgender teens, but none more powerful than Andy Myrick, a professor at Vermont Technical College.
“It would have been easier to sit in my backyard with a beer tonight,” Myrick said. “But, I’ve lost three students to suicide and all of them go back to gender identity issues. This scares the (expletive) out of me. We don’t need any more hate. We will have our differences. But we’re going to have to figure out how to get along.”
One person with first-hand knowledge of that is Eirin Donovan, who is going to college in South Royalton and is a trans woman.
She said she had a drinking problem and doesn’t remember years of her life as she medicated herself.
“But, I don’t like to focus on the negative because so much of our lives are wonderful,” she said, crying. “And I don’t know how many times I tried to kill myself. It’s a lot. I don’t want your kids to go through what I went through.”
And another speaker addressed the culture that he saw permeating the debate.
Brady Crain graduated from RUHS in 1988. Despite being heterosexual, he was small in stature and not overly masculine when he was in high school, and he said he was bullied constantly by fellow students and teachers alike. He barely graduated.
Once he got out of high school, he flourished, earning a fistful of degrees over seven years including a master’s degree in business administration from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
He also became a champion taekwondo fighter and became the U.S. bronze medalist in 1999 in the heavyweight division.
But he said it was the homophobic and transphobic reaction in the community that he was seeing surrounding this issue that held him back when in high school.
“It was because of the vitriol exhibited in this room,” Crain said.
While speakers supporting the transgender student and school’s actions outnumbered opposition by more than 3-to-1, there was vocal opposition.
Ron Rilling, former pastor at the Green Mountain Gospel Chapel and a 50-year member of the community, was the first speaker of the night and he spoke forcefully, his voice shaking as he told Millington he had put girls at risk.
“Shame on you superintendent Millington, shame on you for failing our children,” Rilling said. “How dare you question parents’ concerns for their daughters’ safety.”
Others also spoke in opposition, including one young man who said, “a man can’t be a woman, and a woman can’t be a man. Period.”
Several speakers pointed out that they weren’t against the transgender student, but defending the girls who didn’t want to have to share a locker room with her.
One of those was House of Representatives candidate Wayne Townsend of Randolph.
“I’m proud of (the volleyball players) for voicing their concerns about their privacy being invaded,” Townsend said. “I don’t think you should feel pressured by a one-sided agenda. We’ll be behind you.”
Patton, the volleyball captain, said one of the misconceptions that had been spreading was that all of the team was upset.
Patton said the majority of the team didn’t have a problem with anything, but some on the team brought negative feelings about a transgender person into the situation but she didn’t see how they had been affected by it.
“The only one truly affected is the transgender girl,” Patton said.