Hundreds Of Students In Virginia Host Walkout Over Anti-Trans School Policies

The students are demanding the state Department of Education revoke the guidelines and that individual school districts also reject the proposed changes, said the Pride Liberation Project, a student-run LGBTQIA+ advocacy group with over 500 members who helped organize the walkout on Tuesday.

“So often in issues around education, students are excluded from the conversation, especially queer students,” 17-year-old Casey Calabia, who helped organize and participated in the walkout on Tuesday, told BuzzFeed News. “Getting this opportunity to have people listen to what we have to say, all across Virginia, is really imperative to making sure that we are not excluded from conversations that will quite literally change our day-to-day lives.”

Calabia was in “disbelief” when they first heard about the policies.

“How could these things get passed? It is so deeply devastating for trans students. I was so heartbroken and scared,” they said. “I don’t know what these policies are going to mean for the people I love and for myself.”

Since that moment, Calabia, along with many other organizers, worked to make the walkouts happen.

“We’ve had such positive reception, so far,” Calabia said. “We have had over 1,000 students walk out of 100 schools. That’s amazing numbers that we could never have dreamed of achieving. To have this big of a response and this widespread attention is helpful. I’m hopeful that people will listen to us.”

In terms of next steps, Natasha Sanghvi, a high school senior and lead organizer with the Pride Liberation Project, told BuzzFeed News that the walkouts were a great way to make people aware of the situation but that over the next few weeks, the group is planning “to testify and rally at multiple school board meetings.”

“Our main goal is to ensure that we get enough pushback to these regulations so that they don’t get passed, and even if they do get passed, that school boards will be under enough pressure to reject them,” Sanghvi said.