by Adan Salazar
November 1st 2023,

High school students in Loudoun County, Virginia, staged a walk-out protest calling on their school board to reinstate separate bathrooms for boys and girls.

The incident unfolded Wednesday as roughly 50 to 100 students of Woodgrove High School demonstrated against the district-wide policy known as Policy 8040, which allows transgender students to access bathrooms of the gender with which they identify.

Footage showed students at the school singing the Star Spangled Banner in unison:

Happening now in Loudoun County. @7NewsDC pic.twitter.com/kgrOoUfIQg

— Nick Minock (@NickMinock) November 1, 2023

High school students in Loudoun County gathered today to ask the Loudoun County School Board to restore girls only and boys only locker rooms and bathrooms in schools. @7NewsDC pic.twitter.com/EKUj18Hnsf

Students carried signs reading, “Restore Girls Only Boys Only Locker Rooms, Showers and Bathrooms,” with other placards asking, “Why do I have no right to privacy at school?”

One student who participated in the walk-out explained to local ABC affiliate 7News, “In the locker rooms in the morning it’s an invasion of privacy, as I said because when men and natural-born males are in our locker rooms and they are showering in the morning, natural-born females can walk in there as they please…And that is not OK. And it goes against what we believe in.”

Another male student stated, “I would like to be able when I get off football practice and go put my pads away and change not feel uncomfortable with other genders in there watching me…I feel that girls feel the same way about the situation. How would you feel if you were a female changing with a male?”

A female student interviewed by 7News said the policy makes her worry about her safety, saying,

“It’s a massive safety risk, and they [LCPS] don’t do anything about it…And we express these concerns and they ignore us and write us off as right-wing crazies. We’re not crazy. We just don’t want to be in danger on a daily basis in this building. I think it’s people finally stepping up and just being sick of it. We’re sick of being here and just being completely ignored. I stopped using them [the bathrooms] because I don’t know what’s going to happen to me in there. And people can be like, ‘Oh, well, that’s paranoid’. I’m telling you right now half the women in this building feel the same way. We don’t use the bathrooms. We hold our pee until we can’t. I mean, there are girls in PE [Physical Education class] who still get changed in the bathroom stalls in there because they’re afraid of who might waltz in.”

“It should be the entire school [walking out],” another student said. “But there are a lot of people who are scared to speak out against it so they stayed inside because they don’t want to see the backlash.”