In January of 2023 Gov. Sanders became the 47th Governor of Arkansas. When she was elected, most Arkansans expected  that she was going to initiate many conservative leaning changes to Arkansas politics because of her background in the Trump administration.

The Sanders administration has made many changes to the state,  but I would argue she seems to be fixating on the education system. Her landmark bill has been the  LEARNS Act, an extremely controversial bill that altered funding for public schools and introduced sweeping changes to Arkansas education.

In addition to the LEARNS act, Governor Sanders passed a new law saying that all schools have to now refer to all students by their  legal first name, as well as their biological gender, unless a parent gives permission to use the student’s preferred name and gender. This law is clearly made to attack transgendered students. This bill has faced some backlash and I can say that at BIC it has had its fair share of criticism.

I think that this is one of the cruelest things the governor’s administration has done. This law is intended to  attack kids for no real reason. They haven’t really given a justification for the law,  and most people who agree with the law don’t know what problem it is supposed to solve. The people who support this law because they think it helps kids are just wrong because it will result in students feeling unwanted and hated. Studies show that laws like this cause an increase in teen suicide rates with more than 60% of people in the LGBT community saying they have considered suicide, and a majority of LGBT student would say laws lies this only serve to make things worse.

 If you are a parent and you are mad at me for saying these things, I implore you to re-think about your outlook on this and think about why you are mad about me for saying these things. Is it because you actually care about these kids?  Because if you did value their well-being,  you would let children be whatever they want to be, as supporting them in their beliefs would benefit their mental health.  At the end of the day, this doesn’t affect anyone who is complaining about it. Why do these politicians care what these teens are doing with their own life? It doesn’t hurt anyone, and they just want to live their life. It will only help these kids if parents just give them the freedom to be what they want while giving them their love and support. Any parent who chooses to suppress their child’s identity has failed their role as a parent and guardian.