High school principal in
a New Jersey high school unplugged
the microphone on a graduating
valedictorian who was giving
a speech because he began talking
about his queer identity and
his mental health struggles.
So Bryce Dershem was giving
a speech for Eastern Regional
High School that included mentions
of him being queer.
His struggles with online school
during the pandemic, and his
fight with suicidal thoughts and
anorexia.
I think we might
have a photo of him.
He's incredibly adorable with
his trans gay flag fist,
it's just on his graduation cap.
Okay, so here's what happened.
He had this speech written,
he was haggling over words before
with the same school principal.
And then he decided, you know what?
I'm just going to speak my truth.
How am I going to not speak
my truth?
Of course, they wanted him to take
out the part where he
talked about being queer.
And this is what happened when he
decided to speak his truth,
take a look.
>> Throughout our high school
years, I took for
granted the accomplishment that all
of us have achieved today.
For so long, I believed graduation
was simply something that happened.
I didn't realize how wrong I was
until it almost didn't happen
for me.
We brand high school as four years
of self discovery, but
few of us even know where to begin.
After I came out as queer freshman
year, I felt so alone, I didn't
know who to turn to for support.
[APPLAUSE]
>> Okay, so just to explain exactly
what happened during that,
you hear him, you see him.
He's starting to speak
about how difficult it was for
him to even reach graduation day.
And then Eastern Regional High
School's principal walked up to
the lectern to grab the microphone,
grabbing a paper copy of Dershem
speech and
directing him to read a new one.
That had been rewritten without any
mention of the teenager's
queer identity or
mental health struggles.
And so what happens essentially
is the principal takes
the microphone away.
He says read this other speech, and
it looks like another guy comes in
and gives him a new microphone.
I think that he was also in on it,
that was part of the plan.
It was like all right,
have this moment off mic.
The principal probably forgot to
give him back the mic, and
he was supposed to give the agreed
upon speech.
Well, he doesn't, he continues, and
it's a beautiful speech,
you guys should all watch it.
He continues to talk about his
struggles.
So this is Dershem from what he
says about the day.
I don't know
why just a reference to who I
was warranted being cut off.
I was on the verge of tears,
I didn't know what to do.
He said he wanted to share
a message of positivity, hope,
and inclusion,
letting every single person in that
audience know they are enough.
And that their identities don't
deserve to be marginalized or
criminalized or oppressed.
Finally, he says he believes school
administrators intentionally cut
his microphone to try and
force him to give the speech they
had written for him.
He said those efforts began in the
weeks leading up to the graduation
when the principal asked Dershem to
rewrite the speech multiple times.
Like I said, haggling over it.
And at the end,
even though he was cut off,
he said it anyway.
You had a pretty big reaction,
we were gasping in the background.
>> These guys gotta understand this
is just how the people of
that generation communicate.
They don't have a problem sharing.
They don't have a problem emoting
in public.
This ain't the 50s where people
were getting their hands chopped
off in factories from work, right?
That's not the reality of these
kids and these people.
And I think older people just need
to have a better understanding of
this is how they communicate.
You all have your way of
communicating and that works for
you all and it's great.
But this is how they're
communicating.
This kid is not scandalizing
anybody by talking about
his sexual orientation,
his eating disorder, etc, etc.
This is what they do, they share.
And I think any attempt to sort of
get in front of that and try to
stop it, is just foolhardy and
fundamentally doesn't understand
how these kids operate.
And by the way, you're just
going to get left in the past with
that type of thinking.
>> And to add on to what you say,
what are you really stopping by
doing that?
You know what I'm saying,
as you were explaining,
as if these types of conversations
aren't happening all over social
media constantly, as if we're not
exposed to these things.
And then one of the things I was
thinking when I was reading
up on this is, the audacity.
This young man,
was this not his moment?
Was this not his opportunity after
all the work he did entering into
his adulthood and
to the next phase of his life, he's
going to remember this forever.
And I think that this really
highlights the same generations,
boomers, and who call us soft.
And I can't lie,
there's certain things
about the younger generations,
I'd be like, come on guys.
You know what I'm saying?
But, these are the same people who
act like you can catch the gay.
These are the same people who lost
their minds when the country
moved towards school desegregation.
These are the same people who
created the Reagan revolution which
basically was
the counter-revolution to the civil
rights movement.
These are the same people who are
losing their minds about children
learning about the realities of
this country and how it was built,
how it was operated.
My father, I'm 29 years old,
my dad's 70, my people are older.
In his lifetime,
the things that he experienced and
how he knew a slave,
you know what I'm saying?
So all of these things that we're
trying to bury,
that's totally ineffective.
And it's just time for
them to step aside.
>> Yeah. >> Because it's really,
just move on, you know what I mean?
because you're not
stopping nothing.
>> It's also hard to imagine how he
would have edited his speech
in a way that would have made them
feel more comfortable.
Yeah, can you talk about all
your mental health struggles, but
still, don't say gay, don't say
LGBTQ plus, just don't do.
Can you talk about how
you overcame stuff, but make it,
I don't know, make it about
a really hard math problem, yeah.
Did you have suicidal thoughts?
Make it about a difficult class
project that made you sad.
You're trying to sugarcoat it, and
this is a future that's going to
inherit this planet that we've
completely ruined,
that these boomers I'm sorry, but
have destroyed.
And we're asking them to not be
themselves, and not only that,
edit their struggle to amend it so
that it doesn't offend people.
If anything, I feel like that
speech made me gay.
Honestly I'm happy,
and seeing him pull the plug,
I was like that's right.
Hell yeah, you know what I mean?
Even in more solidarity,
because the more you try and
stamp it out whatever the hell
he was trying to stamp out.
>> All he did was amplify
the message.
>> Exactly, that's [CROSSTALK] good
message. >> That's the irony of it.
All you did by being so
facistic and reactionary was ensure
that this message gets out even
further than this little high
school ceremony that I'm sure it
was well attended for what it was.
But I'm sure we would certainly not
be talking about it.
>> Absolutely. >> If these people
didn't act like idiots.
And so that's the best part about
this is that it has the opposite
effect.
>> Absolutely,
that's a great point.
If that wouldn't happen,
it wouldn't have been in any of
the papers.
We wouldn't be talking about
it at all.