The Obama administration’s unexpected directive this month ordering school districts to allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms related to their gender identity and not what’s on their birth certificate has raised hackles across the country. Representatives of 11 states* are suing the administration to prevent the changes.
But with graduation season upon us, attention has turned to style over toilets. Bruce Springsteen knows that within minutes of the last notes of “Pomp and Circumstance,” the “graduation gown lies in rags at their feet.” That hasn’t stopped battles from breaking out as school administrators mandate gender neutrality by banning different colored gowns for males and females, as is tradition in many schools. Students, parents and nostalgic alumni, however, are hitting back.
On a Monday in late February, Chris Winters, the headmaster of Greenwich High School in Connecticut (home of the Cardinals), told his senior class that they wouldn’t be wearing the traditional red-for-boys and white-for-girls gowns for graduation. It would be red for all. He felt the gender-coded gowns were making gender nonconforming students feel unsafe. After a hailstorm of grief, by that Thursday red and white were back and the seniors could decide for themselves which color to wear.
Although he backed off, Winters wasn’t about to admit he had erred. “I’d also like to apologize to those who truly prefer a graduation ceremony where gender is not highlighted — where the focus of the ceremony is less on what makes us different and more on what we have in common: graduating from high school,” according to the Greenwich Time.
At New Rochelle High School in New York (home of the Purple Wave), it was the end of purple and white that started the fight. A decision to give seniors a choice of colors this year and eliminate the white altogether next year enraged more than 800 people who signed an online petition. “In a rapidly changing world, tradition matters,” wrote one, expressing an opinion that’s common in all the schools that are battling these sort of changes.
“Wearing a garment for two hours is not going to devastate or traumatize your life,” wrote another.
Transgender students tend to disagree. They may be small in numbers, but they have been making waves at their schools. Ashton Love, a senior at Morse High School in Bath, Maine, (home of the Shipbuilders) took the issue to the administration. In April the principal announced a switch from blue and white to just blue. Push-back ensued. Seniors have a choice of color this year.
“The reason I brought this to the principal is that I don’t identify with the binary gender,” Love told the Bangor Daily News. “I didn’t know if they were going to force me to wear white, but I didn’t want to wear blue, either.” Ashton plans to go with blue in June to “avoid people thinking I’ve gone back on my transgender choice.”
TeenVogue recently weighed in on the graduation gown issue and declared, “gender is a social construct.” Says TeenVogue:
“A graduation gown should be the ultimate gender-neutral garment. It's a flow-y sheath that totally covers all unique factors of the human body, thus perpetuating an egalitarian aesthetic without mind for appearance. Except, that is, when they're color-coded.”
The civil rights team at Gorham High in Portland, Maine, (home of the Rams) thought it was wrong to have a “gender-divided” graduation so last year they proposed a single color – black – rather than the traditional maroon and white. There were slide shows, open mics and surveys and in the end, the seniors said heck no to black only. So the civil rights team tried for a compromise. How about three colors: maroon, white and black? Seniors said yes and that system seems to be working, according to Gorham student Julia Plante, writing in the Portland Press Herald.
Gorham, unlike many schools, actually involved the stakeholders in the debate. Top-down orders followed by outcry and an abrupt turn-around is common with these kind of decisions. Some districts, however, mandated a change and got it without too much angst. Howard County, Maryland, which operates 12 traditional high schools, has told each school that they can pick one color for their gowns. Graduations there started last week and continue this week.
After meeting with the Gay Straight Alliance Club, the principal of Glastonbury High School in Connecticut (home of the Tomahawks… oh my!) decided to ditch the binary graduation gowns this year and go with a dark blue for all students.
That prompted this comment on the Hartford Courant site: “Good move. It's easier to hide liquor bottles under dark gowns.”
*The nine states suing over the federal directive on transgender bathrooms are Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Also suing are the Arizona Department of Education, school districts in Arizona and Texas, and Maine Governor Paul LePage.
