North Smithfield is my home. When someone stood at this podium and said supporters of inclusive schools had no facts behind them, I had something to say about that.

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Okay, so I'll try to make this as least nerdy as possible, but a lot of my research is on human rights, both why they're good and why we tend to take them away from others.

One of my new projects has been looking at school board meetings from across the United States. And so as I'm doing this research with students, I happened to check on the North Smithfield School Board meetings. And wouldn't you know, the school board meeting that had just happened, an individual was speaking against transgender rights. I was like, wow, I need to go and say something about this. And so I did.

[Cut to September 24, 2024]

Members of the school board. My name is Kevin Carriere. I was born, raised, and now live in North Smithfield, Rhode Island with my wife. I received my master's in public policy and my PhD in psychology from Georgetown University. I am an assistant professor of psychology at Stonehill College, where I research the psychology of human rights, civil liberties, and social justice. I have published 23 peer reviewed articles, 13 book chapters, two edited books and one solo authored book.

I'm here because last month, a fellow town member who is speaking against pro-inclusivity policies within the schools stated, and I quote, “proponents of this policy have nothing fact based or data driven on which to base any intellectual argument”, end quote.

I stand before you today to present fact-based and data-driven reasons on why you should continue to remain steadfast in your support for our transgender and gender-diverse student body.

Our nation's children are good children. They care. Yet a national sample of LGBTQ plus students shows that 81 percent of these students reported feeling unsafe at school, which leaves many to skip school due to these fears.

Transgender youth are 200 to 300 percent more likely to experience sexual assault, sexual orientation, and gender based bullying compared to their non-transgender peers. 12.5% of all transgender children were physically assaulted based on their sexual orientation or gender expression. Transgender girls, that is individuals who are assigned male at birth but identify as female, are 148% more likely to experience sexual assault in bathrooms when forced to use a men's bathroom.

This hate, this aggression is not innate within us.

It is taught.

It is thought by those who stand before you and claim that you have made bathrooms less safe.

Peer-reviewed research shows that while cisgender girls, that means they identify with the gender they were assigned with at birth, and cisgender boys show no difference in their perception of safety within bathrooms, transgender children report feeling significantly less safe using public bathrooms than both.

In actuality, research shows that our cisgender women report feeling more welcomed and safer in climates with gender inclusive, not exclusive, bathrooms. Another study examined over 7,000 transgender youths and found that even after accounting for race, age, gender assigned at birth, sexual identity, and basic gender-based discrimination events in their lives, transgender students who experience being restricted in their ability to access the bathroom that corresponded with their gender identity were 40% more likely to contemplate suicide, 67% more likely to attempt suicide, and 71% more likely to attend suicide multiple times. Let me say that again.

Restricting a child's ability to use a bathroom that they identify with increases the odds that they will attempt suicide by 71%.

Due to time, this brings me to my final point. This past year at the Olympics, we saw a woman, born female, who identifies as female, has spent her whole life as a female-identifying woman, maliciously attacked because people had misidentified her as a man. The public cannot identify an adult's gender, never mind a child's. That is a personal, life-changing, painstakingly difficult process that takes time to work through. If we wish to start judging people based on the bone structure of their face or the elongation of one's nose, we are only a few steps away from racial eugenics. From biological racism of starting to claim that head size correlates with intelligence and more completely debunked racist inaccurate beliefs.

These policies have saved lives.

You save lives.

Thank you for creating and maintaining a safe and welcoming space for children by putting life over politics. Thank you.