Dad Wins Victory for Trans Son Not to Be Deadnamed at Graduation

A high school senior in Indiana can finally look forward to his graduation ceremony after a public campaign convinced his school not to deadname him.

Brian Thomas started a petition last week after he discovered Homestead High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana planned to call out the name his son had been assigned at birth, rather than the name he had been called for the past three years, Wyatt.

“My transgender child is a senior this year and will graduate in early June,” Thomas wrote. “Teachers, pastors, managers, family and friends know him as a boy named Wyatt. But at graduation, because of an unwritten standard the school administration is unwilling to change, he will be called by his dead name.”

He added: “What is meant to be a celebration will instead be yet another moment of humiliation and embarrassment.”

The petition gathered over 14,000 signatures before Wyatt’s dad reported that the school has acquiesced and will be calling him by his true name during the ceremony.

He said the school is attempting to get the correct name onto Wyatt’s diploma, as well, and praised them for how the situation was ultimately handled.

“According to [the principal], he has been called Wyatt for three years, so why not at graduation? This has been a matter of purposeful discussion and careful consideration on the part of the school, and a procedural decision has been made that benefits Wyatt.”