An Open Letter to PENNCREST School Board 

My name is Melanie Weed. At the time I attended Penncrest, my name was Melanie Overturf.

You don’t know me, so let me tell you a little bit about myself. I am queer. I am beyond queer. When close minded people think of what a homosexual looks like, I am what comes to mind. I’ve been out since I was twelve. I’m twenty six years old now. That’s FOURTEEN YEARS of being openly queer.

I didn’t get to Penncrest until I was fifteen. And I have NEVER experienced homophobia the way I did there. The students. The teachers. It was a nightmare.

After only a few months at Maplewood, I was transferred to Saegertown. And in my senior year there, I asked the principal at the time if we could start an LGBTQ+ club, because I personally knew several queer youth in the school who were struggling. We ALL were struggling. And when I asked for the club? I was told if we made a club for the gay students, we’d have to make a club for the Black students. Now, doesn’t something seem really off about that? If it doesn’t, go back and read it again.

My senior year, I had to approach more than one of my teachers about presenting a final to them during a period in which there were no students in the classroom. Because my peers? They were vicious and mocking, and nothing was ever done to stop it. My senior government class? A student looked me in the eyes and told me he made his gay cousin eat off different silverware than the rest of the family, because “he didn’t know where his mouth had been.”

If you have not already been made aware, two of Penncrest’s board members are on Facebook, spewing hateful, hurtful things. The kind of things that make kids kill themselves, the kind of things that makes other people kill kids.

Did you know “conversion therapy” is legal in our state? Did you know adults pay money for their children to be raped and electrocuted by OTHER ADULTS, because the child is “broken” and needs to be “corrected into heterosexuality”? Did you know that?

I did. Because I had a friend who got sent to conversion camp. Where she was raped by grown men, because her parents told her there was something wrong with HER.

Luigi DeFrancesco and David Valesky are online, spewing the vile rhetoric that GETS PEOPLE KILLED. Attached are the screenshots.

I am ashamed. I am disgusted that Penncrest allows OPENLY HOMOPHOBIC AND BIGOTED PEOPLE to sit on the board. These are the men you have making decisions on children? You should be ashamed of yourself.

I’m calling for immediate removal of both Luigi DeFrancesco and David Valesky from Penncrest’s board, on the grounds of blatant homophobia and putting children at higher risk of suicide than they already are.

Yours Truly,

Melanie Weed,
Your local Queer
Penncrest Alum