Administrators at a Pennsylvania high school have said they won't read the name of transgender senior Issak Wolfe when he walks across the stage for his graduation ceremony. Wolfe had asked the school to read his assumed name rather than his birth name of Molly Tack Hooper when receiving his diploma. Though administrators have allowed him to wear the cap and gown designed for male students, his female birth name will be read.
"The school board's solicitor Ben Pratt said Wolfe's diploma is a legal document, so it must bear his legal name. Molly Tack-Hooper, an attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union representing 18-year-old Wolfe, said he is still in the process of changing his name.
'I am really disappointed that the school district doesn't want to do anything to protect transgender students," Wolfe said last month in a statement by the ACLU. "I want to make sure that future transgender students are not humiliated and disrespected the way I was.'"
While the school may be right that the diploma is a legal document and has to include Wolfe's legal name, there's nothing stopping them from reading his assumed name aloud at the ceremony. Would that really be so hard?
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