Lakeside High School junior Lucas Segal earned a trip to San Diego this summer through his advocacy in Family, Career and Community Leaders of America competition for the rights of transgender people to use the restroom of the gender with which they identify.
Segal qualified for the 2016 FCCLA National Leadership Conference in San Diego through the Advocacy event in the state Students Taking Action with Recognition competition. The state event was held Feb. 25 at the Conway Expo Center.
The state's top finishers from the STAR competitions will be recognized again Tuesday at the 2016 Arkansas State FCCLA Leadership Conference, which will be held in the Reynolds Performance Hall on the campus of the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.
Loren Freeman, an eighth-grade student at Lakeside, qualified for the national conference in the Chapter in Review event. Participants usually compete in the event in teams, but Freeman's partner moved from Lakeside during the school year.
Chapter in Review recognizes chapters that develop and implement a well-balanced program of work and promote FCCLA, family and consumer sciences, or related occupations and skills to the community. Duties include plans for the rest of the school year and reviewing previous actions. Freeman must continue to update the portfolio through the school year.
Also attending will be family and consumer science teachers Tonja Bolding, Lisa Gibson and Jaime Lofton. Bolding and Gibson sponsor the senior high FCCLA. Lofton sponsors the junior high.
It is the third time the teachers will travel with students who qualified for the national event. Professional development is offered for teachers at the conference.
Travel costs for the teachers will be covered by federal funding from the Perkins Act. The funds are administered by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Vocational and Adult Education and made available to help provide vocational-technical education programs and services to youth and adults.
The group must raise the rest of the funds on their own for the students to travel. Segal's mother and aunt plan to attend the conference with them.
Segal began the transition from female to male two years ago as a freshman at Lakeside, where he has spent the majority of his time in school. His parents, Connie and Ryan Dean, are Lakeside alumni.
The transition began with adjustments to his name, the use of pronouns and the way he dressed. He later underwent hormone replacement therapy before he completed surgical procedures last summer.
Segal said he received positive support from family and friends. He admits he isolated himself to an extent during the process.
"Now that it's all done, I'm just like I was before," Segal said.
The current school year is Segal's first in FCCLA. Planning for STAR events began in September and Segal favored the Advocacy event.
Advocacy projects can be undertaken by individual students or teams of up to three members. Participants must demonstrate their knowledge, skills and ability to actively identify a local, state, national, or global concern, research the topic, identify a target audience and potential partnerships, form an action plan, and advocate for the issue in an effort to positively affect a policy or law.
Segal was comfortable with the presentation aspects of the event. He initially explored the topic of birth certificate laws. His birth certificate was officially changed last year after his transition.
The Human Rights Campaign featured Segal and his mother in January 2015 in Equality Magazine, nation's largest-circulation magazine for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender topics. "Loving Lucas" centered on Lucas and his mother as he went through the transition.
Segal found he was not as interested in the subject and he wanted to find a topic in which he could succeed in STAR. The chance to go to San Diego was not a motivating factor when he settled on the topic.
"I'm competitive, so I wanted to win," Segal said. "It was really that the topic is kind of personal. Bathroom policies are personal to me and what I've gone through."
"It's a hot topic within industry and business also, not just schools, because Arkansas does not have a law," Bolding said. "Very few states do."
California, Illinois, Nevada and Texas are among the states with laws on the subject. Segal developed a deeper interest as he conducted his research and began to make presentations.
Segal opted to develop a digital presentation instead of a physical portfolio. Judges review information for 10 minutes prior to each 10-minute presentation. They then have 10 minutes to ask students about their topics.
A presentation can have a maximum of 60 slides. Segal's slideshow includes 51 slides, 20 of which detail his research. Much of the rest documents his advocacy.
The regional STAR event was held at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia in November. Segal earned a Gold rating with a score of 97 to advance to state and they began to see a path to the national conference.
"For me, it wasn't about the San Diego trip," Segal said. "I just like doing it. I want to do this for the rest of my life. I want to pursue a career in this."
Segal and his advisers believed he had successfully corrected the necessary MLA style format in his presentation. State judges said the format was still incorrect, but he earned a 98.33.
Six students competed in the category in the regional event. A dozen students competed in Advocacy at state and half earned Gold ratings. Segal was the next to last student to learn of his score.
The full results have not yet been released. Segal may have placed first or second.
The top two finishers qualified for state. The national event will feature the top two teams in the category from every state.
Segal was one of only a few students to compete in the event on their own. Most participants competed as groups, including the other students to qualify for nationals.
"I was not surprised, necessarily, but excited," Segal said. "(Bolding) almost cried."
"I'm just so proud of him," Bolding said. "To be 16 and to put yourself out there in a time where's there is so much controversy -- it's hard being a teenager anyway. To be a teenager that is different from your peers, I just think that takes so much courage. I was not courageous like that when I was 16 years old. I'm pretty proud of him."
Bolding said Segal was immediately ready for the national competition and started to plan for the trip. He plans to take part in the FCCLA Leadership Academy offered at the national conference.
He has continued to receive positive support from adults and his peers. Segal has delivered several practice presentations on campus.
Blake Campbell invited Segal to present the information to juniors and seniors in his Sociology class in the fall semester. Segal enjoyed it so much he asked if he could present again this semester. Administrators also offered him a chance to present to them before a school board meeting.
Participants in Advocacy must have a stated goal and develop partnerships. Segal's goal is for everyone to have a comfortable place to use the restroom.
The family had established partnerships with the Human Rights Campaign and the Arkansas Transgender Equality Coalition prior to his project. His mother knew the mother of the president of the Human Rights Campaign.
Betty Hightower was previously a principal at Lakeside. Her son, Chad Griffin, attended Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia for one semester, then transferred to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Griffin has been president of the Human Rights Campaign since 2012.
The organization has invited Segal to work as an intern in its Arkansas office after he graduates from high school. He has also been approached for another story in Equality.
Segal hopes to work as a public speaker and an advocate as he continues to receive invitations for speaking engagements. He plans to compete in another STAR event during his senior year.
Local on 03/06/2016