Federal Complaint Filed Following Alleged Transgender Bullying at BOCES

A Tompkins-Seneca-Tioga BOCES student has filed a federal complaint after he says he was bullied for being transgender. Kaleb Carthen is a senior at Charles O. Dickerson High School in Trumansburg, and claims that an instructor at BOCES treated him differently due to his sexual orientation. The teacher in the school’s Certified Nursing Assistant program allegedly refused to refer to Carthen as “he”, instead referring to him as “it”. Carthen has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights in an effort to launch an investigation into the bullying.