By Lena Rosen

Grady has always been on the forefront of acceptance when it comes to all LGBTQ+ students. Specifically, when it comes to transgender students, previous principal, Timothy Guiney, made a quick decision to allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms according to their gender. This is regardless of their assignment at birth, ensuring that our transgender students are treated in the same way as their cis-gender counterparts, students whose identified gender corresponds with the gender they were assigned at birth.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the same in other school districts around the country.

Gavin Grimm, a 17-year-old student at Gloucester High School in Gloucester, Va., is male. His birth certificate, however, identifies him as female, and therefore, his high school is refusing to allow him to use the men’s bathroom and locker room.

After numerous cases such as Grimm’s, the U.S. Supreme Court will finally review Grimm’s case and make an absolute decision in one of the many debates over transgender rights.

In the debates over transgender people’s rights to be in public safe spaces such as restrooms, fear is the primary motivator in the argument against this seemingly fundamental right. Ignorant politicians continue to shame and demean transgender people, including the youth they claim to protect, with their decisions about something they know nothing about.

This was clearly shown in the numerous “bathroom bills” around the country. In North Carolina, House Bill 2 was voted in, stating that transgender people should be denied the right to enter public bathrooms that don’t correspond with the gender they were assigned at birth.

Their fears are rooted in the idea that predatory men will enter women’s restrooms in an attempt to assault these women. This falls down to the school level with the idea that male students will use female locker rooms to watch students change and assault them in that space. Frankly, this doesn’t actually happen. High school students do not generally spend their time plotting ways to get into the opposite gender’s locker room or restroom.

Within most public schools, in order to use a restroom or locker room, a transgender student is given a choice. They can either not use the restroom or school locker rooms, or they can use a locker room or restroom where they feel unsafe. These shouldn’t be the only options for transgender students in the United States’ public school system.

I can only hope the Supreme Court takes a page out of Grady’s book. High school is a time of change and stress for all students, but for LGBTQ+ and specifically transgender students, high school can cause serious mental and emotional trauma. Currently, 50-54 percent of transgender students who were harassed or bullied at school attempt suicide, according to a 2014 study by the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention. With an improvement in how the public school system in the United States treats them, that number could drop as well. Transgender students have the right to the same rights as their cis-gender counterparts.