Tennessee school calls police on Black student who defended trans classmate from bullies
Fulton High School in Knoxville allegedly suspended the students, while the bullies escaped without facing repercussions
A Black high school student in Tennessee has accused his school of calling police after he stood up for a Black trans classmate who was being bullied.
TikTok user @willim4606 posted a video from an office at Fulton High School in Knoxville, claiming that an administrator had locked him inside, LGBTQ Nation reports.
In the video, which has had almost 700,000 views at the time of writing, Willum shows an officer standing outside the door and alleges that he was being suspended while the bullies had escaped punishment.
“I’m being suspended right now at Fulton High School in Knoxville, Tennessee because I stuck up for a trans woman,” Willum says in the video. “I stuck up for a trans woman, and she has the freaking police outside.”
Willum claims that the administrator, who is not named, called police after he asked why he was being suspended, allegedly telling Willum that he was being “threatening” and “combative.”
“I was just asking her a series of questions about what was literally going on and why I was facing punishment for sticking up for somebody that was getting bullied,” he says. The administrator allegedly responded by telling him he was “using profanity.”
“Okay, so what? What are you going to do about the actual bullies that were making fun of her in the hallway and humiliating [her]?” he continues.
He also claims that the trans classmate, who was “being deadnamed and bullied in the hallway,” was placed in an alternative for in-school suspension. He also alleges that the bullies “threatened her life.”
“They’re just allowing it and acting like it’s normal,” Willum says. “And the bullies are not facing any repercussions, but we are…. We’re facing repercussions right now, all because I stood up for what I believe in.”
He adds: “She’s a Black trans woman and y’all are treating this as something to stick under the rug…. This is what it feels like to be Black and be a part of the LGBTQ+ community in Knoxville, Tennessee.”
While Willum doesn’t name the administrator who called police in his video, commenters on TikTok repeatedly mentioned Fulton High School assistant principal Beth Haun, with Willum seeming to confirm this by pinning her details to the top comment under his video, the Daily Dot reports.
Fulton High School has yet to publicly comment on the claims in Willum’s video, but the school’s Facebook and Twitter pages are unreachable and Haun’s Twitter account has seemingly been deactivated.
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