By Kate Heitmann

Senior and Plus Club president Jeanne Ozkan needed to write five papers, didn’t receive the grade she wanted on her last math test and her significant other relationships were strained. She felt the stress piling on.

And then she started feeling gender dysphoria — incongruence with one’s gender identity or biological sex. She felt more masculine than feminine. Her grades weren’t her sole source of stress anymore. Now, she didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin due to being unsure of her gender identity.

According to The Trevor Project — a queer youth crisis support and research foundation — 73% of LGBTQ+ youth reported symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder in 2022, with 58% reporting symptoms of major depressive disorder.

Despite these statistics, queer youth are not inherently more prone to mental illness. They struggle with the same mental health concerns that all teenagers face, such as eating disorders, friend drama and the parental expectations to have “it all figured out” by now.

However, queer youth are often in the spotlight of their peers’ scrutiny, poltical debates and administration policies. Last Febuary, the Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources introduced Bill 160 to the Kansas Senate, which would bar transgender girls from participating on girls sports teams in high school. Governor Laura Kelly vetoed the bill and both the Kansas House and Senate failed to overturn the veto. Many trans athletes, however, still don’t feel comfortable competing in high school sports.

Senior Carmen Lukaszewski wanted to play baseball when she first came to East. When she was younger — and identified as a boy — she’d played baseball and soccer on male teams. But once she identified as a girl, she was no longer comfortable playing baseball for a gendered team. She wished that she could’ve played on a gender-neutral team — one where her involvement wouldn’t have been the subject of congressional debate.

“I miss the sports and wish I could get back into them,” Lukaszewski said.

On top of struggling with finding their identity and feeling comfortable expressing that viewpoint of themselves to their family and friends, minor comments throughout the day negatively affect the mental health of queer students.

Ozkan describes East’s environment as heteronormative, where students are expected to be cisgender and straight. Though students and staff don’t intentionally enforce heteronormativity, it's when her classmate’s slip up and they deadname her, when a lab partner misgenders her, or when her teachers corrects her use of “they” as a pronoun — citing it as grammatically incorrect — that add onto the daily stress of school, sports and relationships.

For sophomore Alex Shrock, the new gender neutral bathrooms have relieved anxiety. Last year, he didn’t feel safe using the boys bathroom. When he used the girls bathroom, he would be told “this is a girls bathroom.” He didn’t know what to do. This year, he appreciates being able to use the restroom without questioning which one to use.

“It's nice to not feel unsafe or uncomfortable in a bathroom,” Shrock said. “It’s nice to just go to the bathrooms and not have it be this thing that has to impact you.”

Ozkan and senior Alyssa Alvey feel uncomfortable about the lack of privacy in the open bathrooms. However, Shrock and Lukaszewski feel that the lack of a wall protects them by giving them space for a bystander to step in if they were being harrassed. Both fear they could be harassed in a closed-door setting.

In middle school, classmates barked and shouted f-slurs at Shrock. They’d call him “it” and a “thing.” While he feels safer at East, he still has lingering fears of harassment in closed spaces.

They all feel that East accepts their identities, but still are nervous depending on the situation. They don’t know how someone will react to they way they dress or learning they are transgender, according to Shrock. In middle school, Shrock would enter depressive episodes and worried constantly about others’ perceptions of him. He didn’t want to attend school most days. His mental health has improved at East since he found Plus Club and formed connections with students who've experienced similar struggles.

Due to its supportive environment, Ozkan calls it “friendship club.” When they meet once a week, it’s an opportunity to laugh about their past crushes and make Pride bracelets — even if they’d been misgendered earlier that day.

“In the hallways, you walk around and you feel isolated,” Lukaszewski said. “But having this club, it’s like, ‘Oh, there’s like 10 other people at least here that are like me in some way.’”

Compared to other friends, the relationships formed through Plus Club are based on supporting each other and celebrating their similar backgrounds while also recognizing their differences, Shrock said.

“[My friends and I] both have experiences with being discriminated against and we can share that trauma with each other, but we can also share that joy of same sex marriage legalized and possibly protected in the future,” Shrock said. “It gives me and my friends a really strong foundation to build off of because of how much gender and sexuality can impact our lives.”