Oklahoma school district cancels classes, fearing protests over transgender student

An Oklahoma school district cancelled classes Monday and Tuesday fearing demonstrations after threatening comments were discovered regarding a 12-year-old transgender student who used a girl’s restroom.

Superintendent Rick Beene told KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City that law enforcement urged him to cancel classes over fears that counterprotestors would amass, leading to “problems.”

Activists began calling for protests after Facebook comments threatening a transgender student in the Southern Oklahoma town of Achille emerged, The Washington Post reported.

One of the threatening comments reportedly read: “If he wants to be a female make him a female. A good sharp knife will do the job really quick.”

Another said, “Just tell the kids to kick ass in the bathroom and it won’t want to come back!!”

According to the Oklahoman newspaper, the transgender student’s family filed for a protective order in Bryan County Court on Friday against a person with same surname as one of the parents who commented about the girl. 

The Post reported that the original Facebook message came from a parent of another child at the town’s middle school who warned others that the transgender student was using the girl’s bathroom.

The parent said she and others had attended school board meetings for the past year, trying to change “this situation” but that nothing had been accomplished.

“This is the same kid that got an [sic] trouble as soon as he transferred two years ago for looking over the stalls in the girls bathroom,” she continued, “Enough is enough.”

Beene told KFOR that the threatening comments were not made by the parent who wrote the original post.

The mother of the transgender student told KXII, a TV station in Sherman, Texas, that her daughter has not had any major issues with the district, except for one instance in which another student accused her daughter of “peeping” under a bathroom stall.

“My daughter leans very far forward to use the bathroom so I can understand why someone might see her leaning forward as ‘oh my gosh she’s trying to look under the stall,’ ” the transgender student’s mother said.

The original Facebook post was deleted.