Sacramento students wanted to wear Pride stickers at graduation. Administrators said no
Laura Twizere arrived at her high school graduation last month with a roll of 1,000 heart-shaped rainbow Pride stickers. Before the ceremony, Twizere and her friends handed the stickers out to hundreds of their Antelope High School classmates.
It was Pride Month, after all, and the colorful stickers were meant to spread love. But Lindsey Cutts, an assistant principal who has since become the school’s top administrator, reprimanded the students, telling them they couldn’t hand out the stickers “because political speech is not allowed at graduation,” Twizere said.
To Twizere, Cutts’ reaction to such an innocuous symbol of inclusivity was appalling — but not surprising.
For four years, Twizere had sought to make Antelope’s campus more welcoming to her marginalized classmates, including LGBTQ students. It had been an uphill battle. The 18-year-old had frequently dealt with teachers, administrators and school board members who seemed perfectly content to look the other way when she and her peers brought issues to their attention.
“We’ve been to district meetings, and we see (that) the Proud Boys are not too political, but a pride sticker is?” Twizere said, referring to the right-wing group’s frequent participation in school board meetings. “We see what messages (the school board) is supportive of. The district is not supportive of our message of inclusivity.”
Cutts, the school principal, did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. Roseville Joint Union High School District Superintendent John Becker canceled a scheduled interview, citing a “family situation.” Spokesman Rob Hasty said the district “provides positive campus environments that are safe and supportive for all students.”
“Each of our campuses offers accessible opportunities for academic and social emotional support through counseling, wellness centers and various other caring adults,” Hasty wrote in an email. “These services are offered to support students through any educational or social/emotional challenges they may experience with the purpose of increasing academic achievement, and promoting a positive high school experience.”
Four years of fighting
Before the June graduation ceremony, Twizere said, Cutts told her she would not be able to walk across the stage if she wore a Pride sticker on her gown. The graduate recalled asking herself, “As a non-queer person, is this something to continue fighting for?” She added, “But it’s graduation, and it’s been four years of this.”
The high school senior and her friends and classmates walked across the stage wearing the Pride stickers on their gowns. Some students hid the stickers underneath their gowns. And in the end, no one got in trouble.
Twizere said she risked her ability to participate in her high school graduation over a sticker. And she would do it again in a heartbeat.
“I have one friend who is queer who has religious parents that are not supportive. She couldn’t wear a sticker,” Twizere said. “But when I walked across the stage, I made eye contact with her and it made it worth it.”
Antelope
Located in an unincorporated part of Sacramento County, Antelope High School is an anomaly within the district, the only campus outside of Placer County. It also has a more diverse population of students than the rest of the district. While the district received an ethnic diversity score of 47 out of 100 for the 2020-21 school year, according to state data, Antelope High School scored 60 on the same scale.
Twizere and another 2022 Antelope graduate, Malachi Little, said district officials don’t pay attention to the unique needs of their school.
After the 2020 George Floyd protests, Twizere and Little, who are both students of color, became more involved in activist work on their campus. Both were involved in Antelope’s Black Student Union and the Antelope Student Equity Team.
Twizere was the district lead for Diversify Our Narrative, a nationwide campaign for racial justice in the education system. Initially, the Roseville Joint chapter called themselves “Diversify Our Narrative RJUHSD,” but the district told the group to change its name to remove any appearance of affiliation with district officials.
Now called “Diversify Our Narrative ARGB” (for Antelope, Roseville and Granite Bay), the chapter posted on its Instagram page in May about a Florida high school social equity organization fighting Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which prohibits educators from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity in the classroom. The Florida group sent “Say Gay” stickers to high school seniors across the nation to wear during graduation as a symbol of solidarity with the LGBTQ community. Twizere wanted in.
The “Don’t Say Gay” stickers didn’t arrive in time for Antelope’s graduation, though. So Twizere took matters into her own hands and bought the roll of rainbow Pride stickers.
Despite the administrator’s response to the stickers and the other challenges of the last four years, Twizere said she is grateful that she attended Antelope. In working with other school representatives through Diversify Our Narrative, she said she learned that racism and homophobia are much worse on the district’s other campuses.
Bigotry on campus
Kaneesha Goyal, who graduated from the district’s Oakmont High School in 2021, was the founder of the Diversify Our Narrative chapter. Also a student of color, she said she had grown frustrated by several “prominent instances of racism.”
“You don’t walk around an RJUHSD school without hearing some kind of bigotry,” Goyal said. “It’s just so embedded.”
Slurs, harassment and bullying are mostly ignored by faculty members and administrators, Goyal said.
“There have been times when somebody has been yelling slurs at each other and (the administration) has been right there,” Goyal said. “Throughout high school, the onus of making the change was put on the students. I never saw a person in authority stand up for a person being harassed for their identity.”
Diversify Our Narrative ARGB’s Instagram page has posted dozens of testimonials from students throughout the district who have reported instances of racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia and bullying. I believe these students. I graduated from RJUHSD, too. The same issues of intolerance and ignorance were just as prevalent when I graduated from Granite Bay High School in 2016.
I know other students will follow Twizere, Little and Goyal in advocating for better, more inclusive campuses. But the needed change won’t happen as long as administrators think queer students’ mere existence is “political.”