Student Told To "Prove" He Was A Boy

Last year, right after Thanksgiving, members of the Liberty High School band from Clarksburg, West Virginia, were told to go use the restroom before departing on a bus trip. When Michael Critchfield, a sophomore, went to use the boy’s restroom, he was followed into the room by the assistant principal, Lee Livengood.

Livengood stood and waited for Michael to exit the restroom stall, asking what he was doing in there. Critchfield, who is transgender, says the assistant principal told him he “shouldn’t be in there because I am not a guy, and I told him I am a boy, I identify with this bathroom, and it is my legal right to use this restroom."

As if that were not shocking enough, what happened next is chilling. Critchfield said Livengood continued to harass and intimidate him, ultimately challenging him to use a urinal to prove that he was a boy

“Come out here and use the urinal. If you can’t use this urinal, then you shouldn’t be in here. What if [another] student said you were checking them out in here?’ ”

According to Michael, Livengood then blocked the doorway so he couldn’t leave the bathroom:

“If I tried to get out through the doorway he was in front of, he could’ve said that I hit him or something and got me in more trouble. I was barricaded in the bathroom for three or four minutes, and then a band mom was coming down complaining that they could hear Mr. Livengood yelling at me in the bathroom from the cafeteria, from the hallways, and some could hear it from the band room so she came down to see what was wrong.”

Livengood then told Michael:

“Not going to lie. You freak me out.”

This was said in front of students, and a trip chaperone, gathering outside the bathroom because of the shouting.

Three weeks … three weeks … after Livengood harassed and intimidated the student, he was suspended …for four days … because as Harrison County Superintendent Dr. Mark Manchin said:

“I don’t think more needs to be done.”

Manchin said that, "right now I do not believe the necessity of any additional policies or any protections for any students that we do not already have." He also claimed that since only Michael Critchfield and Lee Livengood were in the bathroom it was a case of he said/he said; apparently Manchin forgot about the crowd who heard Livengood tell Critchfield that he was freaked out by a transgender student.

I’m guessing Dr. Mark Manchin  doesn’t want to protect students from being barricaded and harassed in bathrooms by members of the faculty; and if that’s the case, I wonder how he’d react if it was a group of students holding Michael Critchfield hostage?

No need for extra protections there, eh?

Luckily, the American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU] got involved and …

Last week the county school board voted to not renew Lee Livengood's contract.

Bye Felicia.

NCRM