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EVANSVILLE – The woman at the other end of a leash held by retired teacher Ruth Baize didn’t say much, other than an occasional “meow.”
“This is Theresa, who identifies as ‘Cotton Candy,'” Baize said.
Baize and Theresa Finn addressed the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. Board on Monday about social media rumors that the school district is allowing students to dress and behave as animals, even providing litter boxes in bathrooms.
It’s not true, EVSC officials say and they have taken to the school’s social media accounts to say so.
“It’s unfortunate that schools around the nation are needing to waste valuable time to address such ridiculous rumors,” said Jason Woebkenberg, EVSC spokesperson.
Baize unsuccessfully ran for EVSC school board in 2020, when it was reported that she had a history of making inflammatory remarks on social media.
Stories about furries in EVSC schools have been spreading on social media sites such as Facebook in recent months, fueled by rumors among concerned parents and conservative activists nationwide that school children self-identifying as animals are disrupting classrooms. At the heart of the rumors is the idea that schools allow children to identify as animals as an extension of not discriminating against students because of their sexuality or gender identity.
Among the rumors: Not only are EVSC schools allowing students to dress and behave like animals, but also accommodate their bathroom needs.
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“There are no litter boxes in our schools. Period. There never will be,” said EVSC Superintendent David Smith, after Monday’s board meeting.
Jim Baize, who is Ruth Baize’s husband, compared furries to gender identity in his own comments on Monday.
“This gender dysphoria, this animal dysphoria, that you are starting to see in your school system, by ignoring or tolerating it, not only is it going to continue but if you reward this behavior it will worsen,” he said.
Rumors about furries have persisted despite fact-checking by news organizations that found no evidence of school children identifying as animals. The rumors have surfaced at meetings in Michigan, Texas, Iowa, Wisconsin and Nebraska, among other places. And on Monday night, the rumors surfaced at the board meeting in Evansville.
“Furries are adults who feel a deep kinship with a certain animal and dress like that animal,” Ruth Baize said Monday.
However, not in the way that a transgender person identifies as a different gender, according to the organization Furscience. Instead, it’s more like the cosplay − which stands for costume play − phenomenon where participants dress and role play as favorite characters from comics, anime, movies and video games.
According to Furscience: “The term furry describes a diverse community of fans, artists, writers, gamers, and role players. Most furries create for themselves an anthropomorphized animal character (fursona) with whom they identify and can function as an avatar within the community. . Some furries wear elaborate costumes or paraphernalia such as animal ears or tails, or represent themselves as anthropomorphic animals in online communities such as Second Life.”
On Monday, Baize recited a series of second-hand reports about furries in EVSC schools but produced no actual evidence.
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That didn’t surprise board member Ann Ennis, who called Monday’s public comments to the board “most unusual.”
“The accusations are false. I have yet to hear a first-person witness account of any of these rumors,” Ennis said. “All of the perhaps one dozen persons I have spoken to about both of these concerns in the last eight to 10 months are working from rumor, are extremely afraid and talk a lot about parents’ rights. But they are opposed to the rights of parents who disagrees with them.”
Ennis said one of the speakers Monday told her about several teachers having witnessed EVSC accommodating the behavior, but she said no one has agreed to meet with her about it.
“Monday night there was no evidence provided, just a costume stunt,” Ennis said. “There are no accommodations being made of animal-identifying students in the EVSC.”
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