A student at Brookfield High School in Connecticut removed a tampon dispenser that had been installed without notification in the boys’ bathroom.
The student, Michael Cestone, said he did it not out of hate but because the school failed to inform students and parents.
“It wasn’t out of hate for trans people at all. I don’t have a single ounce of hate for anyone,” Brookfield student Michael Cestone said.
“I did it because I personally felt strongly about it, and I felt that the school should have notified us — all of our families,” Cestone said, noting that the bathroom is visited by students “from grades three to twelve.”
“The school didn’t notify us at all,” leaving Cestone “outraged” and “confused.”
“This agenda is something that we, as young people, aren’t really used to having on us — we have never learned to deal with situations like that,” he said.
When he found many other students questioning why it was there, he took it down.
“My objective going in there was just to see what was going on and then it turned into me taking it down,” he said, adding that when he returned home, “I called the school and I admitted to it, because it set in, and I was like, ‘What did I just do?’”
The principal tried to label it a hate crime but backed off due to media coverage.
Cestone went public because the principal had promised but failed to send an email clarifying Cestone’s intentions were not motivated by hate.
BREAKING: I spoke with Michael, the hero who removed a tampon dispenser from the boy’s bathroom in his school.
The principal pushed to charge him with a hate crime but dropped it after seeing all the support for Michael on social media.
Michael is a warrior for truth!
Full… https://t.co/wPPGqgMqEQ pic.twitter.com/lJ4uHKtg3U
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 21, 2024
“I think sharing that story of what happened really quelled that from ever going to that place of ‘restorative discipline,’ as the principal called it,” Cestone’s associate Austin Montero said.
“Because if it didn’t get coverage, they probably would have punished me with something,” Cestone said.
A new Connecticut law will require menstrual products in men’s rooms starting in September, but the student and others felt the school should have communicated about the change.
Montero said he is “really disheartened and dismayed by the principal’s actions,” noting that he “should have communicated” about the new law that “doesn’t go into effect until this September.”
“What I did was genuinely not out of hate for anyone,” Cestone said. “The reason why I decided to go public with this is because he didn’t end up sending that email that he said he would send.”
“That was kind of upsetting to me, because there’s some people in my own school who view me differently because of what I did, and I genuinely thought an email would help breeze that over a little bit,” he added.
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