Ryan Walters is a former high school history teacher who, during his tenure as Oklahoma public school superintendent, has transformed himself into the most powerful voice in Oklahoma’s reputation for strident conservative politics. One of the culture warriors.
Earlier this month, gay and transgender advocates accused Walters of fueling a dangerous climate of intolerance in public schools after a 16-year-old non-binary student died a day after an altercation in a high school girls’ bathroom.
In his first interview, Mr. Walters responded to the student’s death, telling The New York Times that the death was a tragedy but that it did not change his views on how schools should deal with gender issues. .
“There are no multiple genders. There are two. That’s how God created us,” Mr. Walters said, adding that he did not believe non-binary or transgender people existed. He said Oklahoma schools do not allow students to use a preferred name or pronoun that is different from their birth gender.
“You always treat individuals with dignity or respect because they are created in the image of God,” Mr. Walters said. “But that doesn’t change the facts.”
Mr. Walters, who eventually ran Oklahoma public schools and was considered a possible candidate for the top job, has been one of the state’s loudest voices seeking to prevent schools from discussing and promoting LGBTQ issues. His fellow Republicans in the Legislature support a slew of new and proposed laws targeting gay and transgender people.
Transgender students said in interviews that comments from officials like Walters were seen by their classmates as giving them permission to harass and bully them at school.
At an Oklahoma State Board of Education meeting this week, Sean Cummings, the deputy mayor of The Village, a town near Oklahoma City, blamed Nex for bullying Board of Education’s anti-gay and anti-transgender policies. “You brought it,” he said directly to Mr. Walters.
Questions remain about what family members say Nex was bullied at Owasso High School before the Feb. 7 bathroom brawl and how that might have had anything to do with their deaths. Police said Wednesday that Neckels did not die from traumatic injuries, a finding that Walters reiterated.
“We are told the death is not directly related to the fight at the school,” he said, warning that the investigation was ongoing.
The Owasso Police Department late Friday released several videos showing Nex walking under his own power after the altercation and separately speaking to an officer at the hospital.
Nex told officers they poured water on several girls who were teasing them in the girls’ bathroom, and then three girls knocked them to the ground and “started beating” them.
“I blacked out,” Nex told the officer.
Owasso Police Department spokesman Nick Boatman said investigators have not determined the cause of the student’s death.
Sarah Kate Ellis, president of the advocacy group GLAAD, said in an Instagram post this week that the death was “a tragic, senseless and shocking attack that should never be forgotten “.
Walters said the tragedy was exacerbated by outside advocates trying to make a political point.
“I think what’s scary is that we have some radical left-wingers who decide to run with a political agenda and try to weave a narrative that’s not true,” he said. “You have a tragedy and some people are trying to exploit it for political gain.”
Officials conducted interviews with students and staff at Owasso High School. The school district said the altercation lasted less than two minutes and the student involved then walked to the nurse’s office.
Police said the incident was not reported to police until Nex was taken to the hospital by his family. They went home that day. The next day, Nex was rushed back to the hospital by local medical staff and pronounced dead. The state medical examiner’s office declined to comment on the autopsy or any toxicology results but said a final report will eventually be released.
Much of the criticism Mr. Walters has received has focused on his recent appointment of Chaya Raichik to the state board. Ms Raichik, who has posted anti-gay and anti-trans content on her X account Libs of TikTok, is a member of a committee that considers the appropriateness of books for school libraries.
“Ryan Walters has created a devastatingly hostile environment for transgender, two-spirit and gender non-conforming students,” said Nicole, executive director of Oklahoma Liberty, which advocates for transgender and gay rights. McAfee said. Since Nex’s death, they said, “I’ve seen countless times people share a photo Ryan Walters posted from his campaign of people in a bathroom using language specifically slurring trans youth. “
Mr. Walters, 38, has been an unapologetic lightning rod in Oklahoma for his direct verbal attacks on school districts, teachers unions and occasionally individual teachers whom he accuses of promoting “pornography” or “radical gender” in public schools theory”. In 2020, he was appointed to the Cabinet as Secretary of Education by Governor Kevin Stitt, and in 2022 he was elected Governor of the state.
He has pressured educators in several districts to resign, including a teacher who protested over the ban on certain books and an elementary school principal who performed in drag outside school.
This aggressively partisan attitude surprised some of Mr. Walters’ former students, many of whom admired him as an approachable teacher who valued debate. “Walters would go to great lengths to remain apolitical,” said Sean Hood, who took at least three history classes with Walters at McAlester High School. Mr. Hood said that as a teacher, he rarely expressed his political views other than displaying large cutouts of Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan.
“He’s probably the most popular guy in the school,” said Mr. Hood, 22, adding that Mr. Walters’ current political profile was at odds with the teacher he knew.
Mr. Walters’ public fight comes as conservative states across the country pass laws restricting transgender rights. In Oklahoma, lawmakers banned transgender care for minors and explicitly banned the use of gender-neutral markers on birth certificates.
The Oklahoma Legislature is currently considering a bill that would prohibit residents from changing the gender designation on their birth certificates, and another bill that would require public schools to adopt policies that gender is an “immutable biological characteristic” and ban the use of alternate first choices. Name or pronoun. Another proposal, called the Patriotism Not Pride Act, would prevent state institutions from displaying flags or symbols that support gay and transgender people.
“It’s extremely harmful,” said Whitney Cipolla, a board member of Equality Oklahoma, which advocates for gay and transgender rights. “I know some queer educators who are afraid of teaching.”
In interviews, transgender and non-binary youth in Oklahoma said the political climate has made their situation more difficult.
“There’s a lot of helplessness,” said Harley, an 18-year-old transgender girl and high school student in Claremore Township. She asked that her last name not be used for fear she might be targeted by anti-trans activists. . “You’re always a little concerned that you might be attacked, that you might be one of the victims.”
Haley said she met Nex at a program in Tulsa that provides counseling and other assistance to young people, including those who are gay or transgender. Harry said Nex was “very friendly, outgoing and a very friendly person,” but added that she didn’t know much about the altercation before Nex’s death.
Asked how Oklahoma schools should treat transgender students, Mr. Walters said schools would “continue to treat every student with dignity and respect,” but would not “enter the transgender community by accepting all of these premises.” gender ideologies” and forcing teachers to adopt them.
Walters, a self-described history buff and reader, said he sees the country at a crossroads.
“I do see a civil war going on and the left fighting for the soul of our country,” he said. “They are destroying the principles that make this country great, our Judeo-Christian values and our traditions as a nation.”
Returning to these values and traditions, he added, “is what will unite us.”
Kirsten Noyce Contributed research.