A sort of homecoming

This Saturday at Windham High School, a junior boy and girl are scheduled to parade down Gray Road in a float as part of Homecoming festivities. To the casual observer, the parade will seem typical enough, unless you know the process of how the two “monarchs” came to be.

As it turns out, three junior girls and one boy ran for the queen spot, and four other boys ran for king. After nominations were filed, but before the election, the junior Homecoming committee and its advisor decided to change the titles from king and queen to monarchs. When the vote was finally taken last week, the boy and girl originally running for queen had tied for most votes.

When a friend first nominated the male winner, the boy clearly was running for queen and wanted it that way. He may have had fine intentions or rebellious ones, we can’t know. High school-aged kids are always pushing the envelope and good for him for going against the grain. But, being a popular student, the boy got many votes from his peers. So, that’s why it’s sad the people in charge didn’t allow the boy’s original intentions of running for the title of queen to rule the day.

It doesn’t matter why this student wanted to run for the queen seat, the same principle holds true: The rules changed once it was known a boy was running for queen. The word “monarch” was never mentioned before this boy’s entrance into the race. At least two people – the nominee and the one who nominated him – wanted one thing and another thing happened once the nomination sheets were in the ballot box. That’s not fair. The committee may have avoided an embarrassing situation, but it violated the boy’s wishes and those of his friend.

One last thing needs to be mentioned and that concerns the process of writing this admittedly delicate story. Gender roles can be pretty sensitive in present-day America. When anything so out of the ordinary like this happens, people in power can get skeptical and worried about the media’s intentions. But, while no newsperson can claim to be free of bias, this story is an interesting one and school officials are bound to explain to the public what is happening in our publicly funded schools. They failed their responsibility to the public’s right to know, claiming the issue was a private one.

It was sad to see how negatively the school administration reacted to our questions about this vote for the Homecoming court. I doubt anyone will say a boy running for queen isn’t interesting, even fascinating. But even more interesting, and telling of the social climate we live in, is how the people in charge of the vote changed the titles to monarchs once a boy was nominated for queen. And, as CBS’s 60 Minutes would say, that’s a story.

As Americans, we need to keep in the front of our minds that everything public, especially public schooling, is open for public perusal and scrutiny. What’s happening in our taxpayer-funded schools is not off the record or private. This is a school-sanctioned contest. Homecoming is a public event with the king and queen traditionally appearing on a float riding in a parade. You don’t get much more public than that. Why were the names of all the court not made public? Is it because school officials are so scared of lawsuits that they are ignoring long-established right-to-know laws?

Newspapers write about Homecoming events quite regularly, as we do about most everything that happens in schools. This year’s Homecoming is a little different with a boy running for queen and the public deserves to know about it, just as they deserve to know about other events in school. If school officials didn’t view the vote as controversial, we would have surely gotten the names in the whirl of a magic wand.

This is admittedly a minor story in the big scheme of things. It doesn’t have to do with taxes or public safety or the integrity of town officials. This is about a boy who would be queen but wasn’t allowed to be. The only one hurt here is this boy, whose ambitions were squelched by others intent on not rocking the boat. We all should applaud this kid for bucking trends and doing something different.

-John Balentine, editor