(Photo: BuzzFeed News/Fiona Sandi)
After the removal of a transgender student from the prom king ballot made national headlines last week, a Georgia high school has made their prom court categories gender neutral.
Instead of a prom king and queen, Johnson High School in Gainesville, Georgia will now crown two royal knights—all thanks to 17-year-old Dex Frier.
Earlier this month, the senior student wanted to enter the prom king ballot, but because he is transger, was instead instructed by a superintendent to enter as a prom queen nominee.
"Removing me from the king ballot and giving me the option to run as queen shouldn’t have been the way to fix this situation,” Frier told NBC News.
Once Frier's story went viral, an online petition demanding the school to "allow transgender boy to run for Prom King" spread like wildfire and has amassed over 31,000 signatures.
The school came up with the gender-neutral compromise to the petition after Frier's grandfather met with school officials last week. Winners will now be named Royal Knights, alluding to the school mascot.
“I think they changed the categories because they were starting to understand exactly how far our movement could go,” said Frier. “Our superintendent said that he didn’t want to put our school in between a hot topic, but he did that by neglecting to have rules that dictate gender-ruled ballots in the first place.”
He continued:
“I wasn’t thrilled to hear that they made a completely nonbinary ballot, but it was better than being exiled from the group. I would have preferred the situation be left alone, because everyone was fine with it as it was, but I was grateful to still be included though.”
Despite the controversy, Frier's peers showed overwhelming support for their friend and at last Saturday night's prom, he was crowned one of two Royal Knights, complete with feathered masks alluding with their masquerade theme.
“It was amazingly overwhelming to win,” said Frier. “They called my name, and all I could hear were my friends cheering for me. I just smiled extremely wide, and when I got to the bottom of the stairs, all of the people that had helped make this happen were either sobbing hysterically or smiling so wide I thought they would hurt themselves.”
