The principal of Dorrego School, a public institution in the municipality of Morón, reprimanded a pair of girls for holding hands during recess. When their classmates confronted him, the principal responded that he had a gay friend but didn't allow him to kiss another man in front of his son. This sparked an immediate reaction from the faculty and students. Photos: Courtesy of Sol Varela Gamarnik. At the Manuel Dorrego School in Morón (EES N31), a pair of third-year girls were holding hands. A teacher noticed them and told the principal, Gustavo Martínez, who that same afternoon approached the third-year classroom where one of them studied. In front of everyone, he told the student that what she was doing "was a sexual act" and that "there are places and places" for that type of behavior. "When the students told him that this was homophobic, the principal responded that he has a gay friend but doesn't allow him to kiss his partner in front of his son." "What she was saying just kept getting worse," Nazarena Ramos Mejía, vice president of the Dorrego student council, told Presentes . After the principal left the room, the teacher continued to berate the girl on her own. "She grabbed her arm and kept telling her that this couldn't be, that she had to understand. And this was a biology teacher, of all people," Ramos Mejía added.

School mobilized

After speaking with the girls, the student council decided to call a meeting of delegates and address the issue in an assembly. There, it was decided to organize a sit-in across all three shifts and to hold literary cafés about sexual diversity through the committee for gender equality and against violence. The sit-in took place on Friday, and the school walls were covered with posters. Meanwhile, some teachers drafted a document, which they are signing, to present to the administration. In it, they categorically reject the principal's discriminatory comments and assert their acquired rights and the primacy of the National Sexual Education Program. "What we do in the document is substantiate the existing laws, with the consensus of a large group of teachers, to support this complaint about the attitude of this principal, who is also new, having arrived at the school this year," one teacher told [the school/organization]. Presents Professor Patricia Collado.

Excuses

During the sit-in, according to Nazarena Ramos Mejía, the principal approached as if to apologize, but then quickly said that they had to understand him because of his position. "It was as if he hadn't said anything at all. Besides, it's not the first time this has happened. Some female teachers have already been threatening to discipline same-sex couples, something that doesn't happen with heterosexual couples." The organization for sexual diversity, Conurbanos por la Diversidad, offered their support to the student center and agreed to participate in awareness workshops later on.

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“We come into this in a complicated context in Morón. These incidents are becoming increasingly frequent in the municipality. As an organization, we are overwhelmed. We see that there is a whole context that explains this. At the local level, there is a dismantling of public policies on gender and sexual diversity, an emptying of what has been built in Morón, integration with community channels, messages in public spaces. With very limited visibility. This has to do with a political line, which comes down here in Morón but also at the national level,” she told Presents Diego Bocchio, coordinator of the western zone.

These are some of the slogans against homophobia that were plastered all over the school: 

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