For allegedly posing
Where’s the respect for her identity?
A 29-year-old woman has been arrested in New Jersey for allegedly posing as a high school student.
How do they know she was posing as rather than identifying as?
The woman, identified by police as Hyejeong Shin, has been charged with using a fake identification document to enrol in New Brunswick High School.
Ms Shin attended the school for four days before staff found out her age.
But age is just numbers on a piece of paper. If her soul is 17, who is the school to deny it?
The issue came to light at a local education board meeting on Tuesday, where New Brunswick Public School District Superintendent Aubrey Johnson told attendees that Ms Shin was caught at the school.
“Last week, by filing some false documents, an adult female posing as a student was able to be enrolled in our high school,” Mr Johnson said.
But what if she’s a teenager in her mind? How can they dismiss her reality like that? Trans teenagers are teenagers!
Posing as a teen to attend high school seems less problematic than identifying as a woman and using women’s spaces when you’re a man. Of course, that depends on why she wanted to go to the high school.
I was figuring it was a story about a TiM; something like Steph-on-knee* goes to high school?
* I wonder; is he “aging” from a five year old into a teen, or is he going to be a child forever, like Charlie Brown and the rest of the”Peanuts” gang? (Or, like Bart & Lisa Simpson.)
Any hint as to her motive? Didn’t know about GED? Wanted to get to the prom she missed before?
She graduated from Rutgers in 2019 with a BA in Political Science and a minor in Chinese.
I can imagine many reasons to want to return to high school, either to live out something that was missed or to revisit a time that was better than current reality.
I had a friend who eventually went into law. Shortly before finishing his undergrad, he went back to his home town and tried to re-enroll in high school. They wouldn’t let him, so he sued, but withdrew the suit after talking with the district lawyers. Why did he do it? To be obnoxious, to force people to obey the law, for practice, as a lark? Probably some combination thereof.
I saw the linked article and it reminded me of this topic. The article mentions several cases of adults posing as teenagers in high school sports teams. In some cases, the adults were actually claiming to be teens and had fake documents. But the main case in the article involves one of a team’s coaches suiting up and playing in a game.
NYT: Coach Who Posed as a High School Player in Virginia Causes Season’s Forfeit
(The woman was an assistant coach, this was a junior varsity game, the woman has been fired, and the players on the team made the decision not to go forward with the season.)
Innnnnteresting.