Teen to Skip Graduation After Principal Insists on Deadnaming Him
A high school senior in southwestern Indiana who will graduate in less than three weeks is considering skipping his commencement ceremony to protect his dignity.Instead of looking forward to the rite of passage, Bradley Curry’s disagreement with Boonville High School administrators has consumed the teenager's last weeks of school.
The 18-year-old transmasculine student alleges that the principal, Mike Whitten, indicated he will call the student’s deadname and not their chosen name at the ceremony, this as a reversal of what Curry has been referred to by school staff and classmates for the past few years."I have been out since I was 12 years old and have been going by Bradley since then," Curry wrote on Facebook Wednesday. "All of my teachers and classmates call [me] Bradley.
I am now a senior and will be graduating in about 2 weeks. It seems as though, sadly, I will be unable to attend graduation simply because of the principal's personal feelings against referring to trans people by their names."He explains that along with advocating for himself, his parents have been calling and writing to school officials to work out an acceptable solution, to no avail. "[T]he principal still refuses to call me Bradley because of his own personal biases.
I was always under the impression that the teachers and staff are supposed to make sure every student there has a safe learning environment and feels comfortable coming to school.
