Eric von Roeschlaub said he decided he was transgender at a very inopportune time.
“I kind of figured out I was trans at the worst place possible.. Girl Scout Camp,” said von Roeschlaub, now a sophomore at Paul D. Schreiber High School. “The scouts have been awesome about it. I was even allowed to stay after I started transitioning. I quit because I didn’t want that girl label.”
Von Roeschlaub said he has overcome many challenges since then, but now finds himself in the midst of a controversy at Schreiber High School over the use white gowns for females and blue gowns for males at graduation.
He attended a Port Washington School Board meeting on April 19 in which the policy was discussed, saying he was one of those who felt hurt by school rules that would force him to wear a gown color that no longer matches his identity when he graduates.
“Though it says female on my birth certificate, I identify myself as male and it would be humiliating to force me to walk and dress with the girls just because according to the law I am still a female.” von Roeschlaub said.
He said he has a lot of friends in similar situations who weren’t able to attend the meeting but would also be humiliated if forced to dress in a color that didn’t identify themselves correctly.
“This isn’t a question on how much we value the old tradition as much as it is a question on whether or not we’re going to be starting a new one,” he said.
Von Roeschlaub said he came out to friends shortly after discovering that he was transgender, but it took him a few months to work up the courage to tell his parents .
“At the end of August I’ve come out to all of my friends,” he said. “Just because I was so darn scared of coming out to my parents I felt like I needed an extra support group just in case.”
Eric’s mother, Diana von Roeschlaub, said when her son first came out she was terrified of his future, but is now more understanding.
“Eric’s transformation has been a remarkable journey for my husband and for me and today I can say I’m a more compassionate, understanding, and forgiving individual than I was last summer,” she said. “I’ve come a long way because of Eric.”
“There were a couple of bumps along the road, and by that I mean varying from speed bump level to pot hole that should’ve been filled in to a 2010 level,” Eric von Roeschlaub said. “But things have smoothed out and I really am happy with how far they’ve come and how much support they’ve been showing me.”
Von Roeschlaub, who is the grandson of Village of Manorhaven Trustee Priscilla von Roeschlaub, said he started presenting himself as a male shortly after coming out to his parents including his first hair cut.
“I finally got my first masculine hair cut, which was the most freeing feeling ever,” he said. “I never had a better hair cut than one where I got a buzz on it and it felt so freeing to do it.”
He said he was also granted access to the boy’s room.
“I remember this one time this girl just kept glaring at me through the mirror until I left the bathroom,” von Roeschlaub said. “That was when I knew it was time to move on, and I’ve been allowed to go into the boy’s room.”
This year Shreiber High School adopted a gender neutral bathroom.
Von Roeschlaub is now the secretary for Schreiber’s Gay Straight Alliance organization, which focuses on spreading awareness for holidays, such as the Day of Silence and National Coming Out Day.
He said theGay Straight Alliance0 members found out about the gown color issue a week before the board meeting. His classmates, he said, couldn’t attend the school board meeting so he spoke on their behalf.
“It was a little harder than giving my oral presentation in chemistry, but I had been rehearsing it a long time,” he said.
Von Roeschlaub said he doesn’t want his friends to go through an uncomfortable situation and needed to stand up for them.
Officials said at the April 19 meeting that a survey was taken last month by the seniors, which showed 80 percent of students want to keep the traditional white and blue colors, and the other 20 percent are in favor of one color for all students.
Port Washington School Board President Karen Sloan said those numbers weren’t an accurate depiction of student opinion because only one quarter of the senior class took the survey.
Von Roeschlaub said although it would be great for students to be able to choose what color gown to wear at graduation, some will still feel uncomfortable.
“The problem with having the option to choose is that people will inevitably self-segregate, which the president of our GSA brought up multiple times to us,” he said. “So while it would be fantastic to get the right to choose that also doesn’t help the bunch of people we’re trying to protect with this. Such as transgender kids who haven’t come out and just, you know, don’t want to be defined on graduation day as non binary people who don’t identify as male or female or neither or something else entirely. It would still be really incorrect to force them to pick a side.”
Diana von Roeschlaub said this kind of gender conflict is new to her.
When she graduated in 1983, she said, there wasn’t a focus on gender issues with the gown colors.
“I think that’s still possible now and while making the ceremony about personal achievement and not necessarily oh here are all the girls and here are all the boys,” she said. “So I hadn’t really thought about it at all except it was a visual you know here’s the school colors and that’s nice but this is really the first time and really because of Eric that I stopped and said wow that’s making some people feel uncomfortable and that’s unnecessary. It’s about personal achievement and it’s not necessary to segregate that way and it hasn’t always been a tradition. I want everyone to feel excited and happy about their future that day, not reflecting on their own gender concerns. There shouldn’t be any reason as to why that has to happen.”
Sloan said no decision has been made at this time about changing the tradition of the colored gowns, but said she was guided by certain principles.
“A lot of people have a lot to say about the changing of gowns because of tradition and Port Washington is a town that really has a lot of traditions we should be proud of,” Sloan said. “I think the most important tradition that we look out for our kids.”
