Multiple sources have reported that a high school senior in Kellogg will not be able to walk for his graduation after he made a statement during a school assembly that affirmed that there are only two genders.
Travis Lohr claims that he will not be allowed to walk in the Kellogg High School graduation ceremony in an interview with the Idaho Freedom Foundation’s Wayne Hoffman: “We had a school assembly where every senior was lined up to give a piece of advice or something you wanted to say to the underclassmen. And I had wrote something before and I decided to change my statement about an hour before they’d given our cards back and I said guys are guys, and girls are girls: there’s no in between.”
Lohr says that Dan Davidian at first said that he wouldn’t be in trouble for making the statement. The next day, however, Davidian told Lohr that he was suspended for the day and wouldn’t be able to walk for the graduation. According to Lohr, Davidian made the decision because his comments were inappropriate.
After the news that Lohr wouldn’t be able to walk at his graduation, students and community members planned to protest by walking out. In response, the school decided to close at 10:45 am.
According to a post by the Kootenai County Spectator, one of the school’s bus drivers has been fired. Additionally, the graduation ceremony has been delayed due to safety concerns: “The Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office has informed the Kellogg School District of concerns regarding the safety of students, staff and families due to a number of outside groups and agitators.”
According to the Shoshone News Press, however, the decision was merely procedural:
“According to multiple reports from staff at the school, the seniors who prepared statements for the assembly were told that their statements couldn’t contain slurs or racial remarks, among other requirements.
According to several members of the KHS staff, the statements were then vetted before the students presented them.
It has also been reported that Lohr and the other students were told not to go ‘off-script’ from their statements during their time to speak and that is what Lohr allegedly did – and it was him going off-script that allegedly got him into trouble, not necessarily what he had said.”
Some argue, however, that other statements wouldn’t have been punished so harshly simply for going off script.
