Tonight, May 18, 2022, the senior class of North West Classen High School in Oklahoma City, Ok will be graduating.

It is the last of the week-long series of graduations for all the high schools in the city, and it seems fitting that NWC would be the last, and, therefore, most remembered graduation. You may have liked all the songs in the show, but there is a good chance you remember the last song best.

Although discussions to add Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity to the city’s school district policies on bullying, harassment, and nondiscrimination had begun slowly and rather quietly as the topic in the Buckle of the Bible Belt was an awkward one for most, it became very public and complicated when the principal of the high school overreacted to the first piece of positive information for the Gay students that was hung in accordance with the spirit of the policy on nondiscrimination as school policies applied to all students, listed or not, as was established by the district’s own committee on equal rights, by taking it, somehow, as a personal attack on him and a political move detrimental to him and the school and was joined in this by assistant administrators who saw being Gay-Positive might ruin their chances of advancement.

For the 10 years out of the twelve that it took to move the school district administration, the 10 superintendents (there was an amazing turnover as each failed to be the expected miracle), an amazing number of mid-level administrators who came and went with surprising frequency, and 3 principals, rather than let the topic be discussed in the central administration building, school administrators assumed the roles of the defenders of the status quo, and with each poor choice of action, they would double down to erase the memory of one mistake by committing a worse one.

Although it was slowly becoming obvious that the main administrators of the district might have begun acknowledging the importance of the addition of these words to policies but were just trying to find a way to do it or pass it down the road to someone who would, in such a way it did not come with political and religious related problems. They wanted to save face.

After 12 years during which time people had gone before the School Board to, among other things, advise that if they did not extend protections for the Gay students in the district for the correct reason, being responsible for the safety, wellbeing, and education  of all students in  its schools, they should do it for the self-serving reason of avoiding litigation when, after all the times people appeared before the School Board and read from reports and offered statistics to justify the need, if a child were to be harmed, a parent could point to the many times the board simply chose to ignore the facts.

At least do it to avoid future litigation.

And, so it was, that in December 2009, after the passage of the Michael Shepherd law, the board sat at the dais and marveled at all the information they had accidentally come across individually, on their own, over the weekend explaining their legal standing according to this law and decided to finally do what it had been asked to do for years, claiming they had come to this moment totally by accident and totally on their own. Much of their newly self-discovered reports and statistics had a familiarity to them as they were merely read from what had been handed to each board member over the years.

So, tonight the students from the high school which for some unexplained reason chose to be the major battlefield a war that wasn’t the one they thought was being fought.

 With this final graduation the 25-year chapter from a request in 1997 to this night comes to a close as the Oklahoma City Public Schools class of 2022 graduates as the first class of any school system in that state having had Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in school policies their whole educational career without any of the predicted problems having taken place.

When the last graduate of NorthWest Classen High School is handed a diploma, that will end one chapter, and this milestone will become the status quo.

CONGRATULATIONS NWCLASSEN KNIGHTS CLASS OF 2022.

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