James Hubert Blake High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, is ending a decades-long graduation tradition in an effort, school authorities say, to recognize transgenderism.
The school’s tradition was to have two different graduation gown colors, one for boys and one for girls. But now the school is ending the practice, and robes will soon be “gender neutral” as a paean to those who are somewhat confused on what gender they wish to claim.
Chloe Martin-Poteet, the school’s gay-straight alliance leader, was thrilled with the coming change. “Some people say it’s just a color, but if it is just a color, why can’t they all be the same color so we can be inclusive?” she told the Washington Post.
The decision is not limited to James Hubert Blake High School but is one being enacted one school at a time throughout the Montgomery County schools.
Blake High School is leading the charge for transgender recognition, not just in Maryland, but elsewhere. The students in the school’s gay-straight alliance group even won an award in 2012 for activist work in gay rights. And the club led the way in their school to force the school’s principal to go along with the robe color change.
Not everyone at the school was for the change. Another group of students gathered the signatures of 50 percent of the senior class to keep the two-colored graduation robe tradition alive.
But in the end, the gay rights group won out. “It’s exciting to accomplish something you know will last,” Chloe said.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston, or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.