I guess it’s taken as a given now that Middle Schoolers should be encouraged to celebrate Pride month. That’s certainly the case in Burlington, Massachusetts where on June 2 the school encouraged students to come to school wearing rainbow colors. But some of the students not only chose not to do that, they decided to disrupt the official school celebration.

The incident happened on Friday when Principal Cari Perchase said “some students had independently organized a counter message to Pride Spirit Day.”

“This became evident in the lunchroom, where several groups of students wore red, white, blue, or black, including face paint,” Perchase wrote in a letter to families.

Perchase said stickers, banners and signs were also torn off walls and crumpled into water fountains.

“…groups of students were heard chanting, ‘U.S.A are my pronouns,’ and students glared intimidatingly at faculty members showing pride,” Perchase continued. “Students were shamed into removing their stickers or covering their clothing with rainbows.”

It’s not clear exactly what prompted this but the principal said some students noted that the school skipped over any mention of Memorial Day this year. She said that was “an oversight” and that the school had apologized for it. “Respect for the observance of Memorial Day and respect for the LGBTQ community are not mutually exclusive,” the principal said. That’s certainly true, the two holidays aren’t mutually exclusive, but I bet there was never a chance the school was going to forget about Pride the way they forgot about Memorial Day.

Now the students have been condemned by the principal, the school superintendent and something called the Burlington Equity Coalition which is now demanding more DEI training.

After hearing about the incident, Burlington Equity Coalition — a group of local non-profits working to promote diversity and inclusion — put out a statement condemning what happened at the school and calling on town leaders to take action.

The group demanded the school district discipline students involved in the protest and fill the position of diversity, inclusion, and equity (DEI) director for the district — a position that has been open for nearly a year.

It also asked the town’s select board to reinstate a temporary DEI subcommittee that it opted not to continue in February. Instead, Burlington Cable Access Television reports, the board requested and was granted $20,000 for DEI training at the annual Town Meeting in May.

To be fair, the kids probably did cross a line by tearing down posters or trying to intimidate other people as the principal’s letter claims. It’s fine to protest but that doesn’t extend to trying to silence other people’s speech or to intimidation.

That said, I’m not sure coming down on these kids with a ton of DEI bricks is the best solution. The thing that needs to be taught here is respect for different viewpoints, not compliance with this particular one.

A bunch of news outlets did stories about this but only this one from WCVB 5 in Boston pointed out that it wasn’t just the pro-Pride students who felt offended. This mother in the story below points out that one of the posters posted at the school included a quote from Tennessee Williams which suggested…what exactly?  That there are no straight people?

This is a line from A Streetcar Named Desire and as presented here on the poster it’s obviously not true. There are in fact lots of straight Middle Schoolers, most of them in fact. Maybe a little respect for them is in order as well, even in June. Here’s the WCVB report.