During a lockdown drill at a middle school in the state of Virginia a trans kid sat on the bleachers as teachers prioritised refusing to let her into the girls’ locker room over assuring her safety in a crisis.
The drill is designed to ready students in case of a mass shooting, the kids practised finding shelter in sex-segregated locker rooms, local LGBTQ group Equality Stafford reports in a Facebook post. However, the transgender child was forced to remain on the gymnasium bleachers throughout the drill rather than prepare for a potential emergency.
“The student was forced to watch the adults charged with her care debate the safest place (for the other students) to have her shelter,” Equality Stafford wrote. “During this debate, she was instructed to sit in the gym with a teacher until the drill was complete, away from her peers and identified as different.”
Teachers eventually decided that the trans teen should sit in the locker room hallway, a door away from her peers – a place unlikely to offer much protection during a mass shooting. Why kids need to be divided by gender in the case of a mass shooting to begin with remains a mystery to everyone.