Chief Peck, the new JROTC instructor at Calvert High School, formerly an instructor at Huntingtown High School, laughs at transgender students requesting a uniform that fits their gender identity, calls them troubled, pushes them to join a bible study at school, favors their bullies, removes students from competition teams for being transgender despite placing 3rd nationally at competitions, and refuses to allow them to sign up for community service events, negatively affecting the student’s ability to gain recommendation forms for Navy recruiters. Principal Lucas has been made aware of it, ignoring complaints of blatant reported discrimination, and has done nothing to prevent it. This is a petition demanding Peck’s removal from his position as JROTC instructor, and forcing principal Lucas to take action to prevent further discrimination.

This discrimination and failure to act upon it is in direct violation of Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 and the Fairness for All Marylanders Act of 2014.

If nothing is done on the school level, this will be taken to the Calvert County Board of Education, and if needed, further.

Riley Brown is an openly transgender male at Calvert High School in Calvert County, Maryland. He is a senior this year, and has been a member of the JROTC program at the school for nearly four years. Ever since the arrival of the new JROTC instructor, Chief Peck, Riley has experienced more discrimination due to his status as openly transgender than he has in all his four years of high school. Riley has been removed from two competition teams and has been denied the right to sign up for community service opportunities, despite putting the same amount of effort and dedication into the program as his counterparts. We believe this is due to his being transgender because of the events we will outline here.

On Friday, October 5th, Riley Brown walked into the JROTC room with a rainbow flag sticker on his shirt. He was asked to remove the sticker, Peck claiming it was “inappropriate.” Riley stated it was from an LGBT+ alliance club, refused to remove the sticker, and left the room. The day after that incident, on Saturday, October 6th, Peck began pushing his bible study at school, saying in the JROTC text chat to attend “if you feel your life is out of control.” He sent another text pushing the subject on Saturday, October 20th, as well as mentioning it to Riley in person 5 or 6 times. Even after Riley took himself out of the chat to avoid it, Peck simply added him back in. After that, Peck considered Riley “troubled” and took his refusal to attend the bible study as a direct refusal of orders, and began shutting him out of JROTC events.

Since then, Riley has been unable to sign up for community service events and was removed from two competition JROTC groups. One, the orienteering team, because it “wasn’t fair” for him to run a female course if he was a “so called male,” despite being told he could not wear a male uniform and that his reasoning was “ridiculous,” paired with a laugh. Peck then took his reasoning back, claiming Riley simply wasn’t “varsity level,” despite placing third in nationals last year. The second was the color guard team, his reasoning being the other members, all cis males, “didn’t want you there.” Riley attended more practices than most of the members, and doesn’t make mistakes at competitions, eliminating the chance for a valid reason to remove him from the team. Even when he was on the team, he was not allowed to participate in any serious events if a certain group of seniors were there, those seniors  These students have tried getting Riley off the color guard team since he came out as transgender in the beginning of his 10th grade year. As soon as Chief Peck came to the school, it worked.

Principal Lucas has been informed of the discrimination outlined here, and told Riley to fill out an incident report and he would “talk to” Peck. After Riley filled out the report, nothing was done. He has not been reinstated to either competition team and still cannot sign up for community service events. This can directly affect Riley’s ability to get recommendations to give to a Navy recruiter, which he’s worked for since joining JROTC freshman year. Peck has experienced absolutely no repercussions, despite the Calvert County Code of Conduct directly stating that the Board of Education “respects the rights of all of its students and is committed to protecting those rights afforded to them by the United States Constitution and federal, state, and local laws,” and “will respect individual student rights at all times and these individual rights will be balanced with the rights of others in light of the mission of the school system.”

The goal of this petition is to show the vast number of people who disagree with the actions of Chief Peck in the hopes that he will be removed from his position without having to take this public. Riley Brown’s father supports this and has agreed to fight for it in any way necessary.