Read Time: 2 Minutes 45 Seconds
As a young girl, Blake Allen says she was taught to respect the privacy of her own body, and to speak up if she felt unsafe or if something made her uncomfortable.
She’s now a freshman in high school in Randolph, Vermont, and as it turns out, she says she was shocked to learn officials and other adults at Randolph Union High School don’t respect those values. In fact, she wrote in a story on Foxnews.com, they “may even punish you for it.”
Not only did the school district punish her, but they shamed and humiliated her for “speaking truth.”
When the 14-year-old Allen told school officials that she didn’t believe a male should be allowed to watch her undress, they not only ignored her request but made her out to be the villain.
“I’m a private person when it comes to my body, even in the safety and the comfort of my own home,” Allen says. “But at school, apparently there’s no problem with a male student watching us girls change our clothes.”
When another student overheard Allen talking about the incident, she was reported to the school’s co-principals.
Allen said that wasn’t the beginning of the humiliating and controversial incident. It started because a male who identifies as a girl was allowed to compete on the girls’ volleyball team.
“When the male student entered our locker room, we were changing. Some of us didn’t have a shirt on; others of us were only in our underwear. Naturally, some of us were uncomfortable and asked the student to leave, but we were ignored.”
After she called her mom to tell her about the incident, her mother and several other parents called school administrators to express concerns about the male student. “They made no attempt to provide us with support or a workable solution, and they made me out to be the bad guy,” Allen said.
That’s how far liberals have taken this entire transgender issue, and it has come at the expense of young women who simply wish to not have their bodies ogled by a member of the opposite sex in a school setting—whether or not the boy identifies as a girl.
“If something feels off, trust your gut? Not at my high school,” Allen says. “If you don’t comply with the school’s preferred gender identity policy, you’re the bad guy. For expressing true, commonsense, biological facts—boys and girls are different and must respect each other’s bodily privacy—I was punished.”
Soon after the school began an investigation into the comments Allen made in class, Allen says the entire girls’ volleyball team was banned from using the girls’ locker room. The school’s co-principals told Allen that she was found guilty of harassment and bullying a student “on the basis of the targeted student’s gender identity.”
She was told that, as a punishment, she would be forced to take part in a “restorative justice circle” with the equity coordinator, submit a “reflective essay” and serve an out-of-school suspension.
More than a bit harsh for a 14-year-old attempt to secure some privacy.
Allen’s father, Travis, was also suspended from his job as the middle school girls’ soccer coach for standing up for his daughter, expressing his views on a Facebook post and calling out the injustice of the male student.
“He got a free show, they got violated,” Travis Allen wrote on Facebook.
It was only when Allen decided to contact Alliance Defending Freedom to sue the co-principals and the Orange Southwest School District that the school district relented and rescinded the disciplinary actions against Allen.
The lawsuit is now unfolding, and the Allen’s are seeking justice for “the school’s unjust retaliation for us speaking freely—for speaking truth.” {eoa}
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Shawn A. Akers is the online editor for Charisma Media.
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