Students at a Maryland high school are moving away from electing a boy as homecoming “king” or a girl as “queen” in favor of a gender-neutral court this year.
Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School students will vote for two people to be honored at halftime on Oct. 7, the Washington Post reports. The two students crowned can include two boys, two girls, transgender students or a boy-girl duo.
The winners can decide whether they want to be identified as a king, queen or as “royalty.”
Student Government Association president Jacob Rains told the Washington Post that students from the association voted to make the change to be more inclusive.
“It provides an opportunity for all students to be involved in something that was exclusionary,” Rains said. “It is not really our job, especially with a gender-neutral and transgender population at B-CC, to tell people that boys have to be kings and girls have to be queens. Who are we to put people into those categories?”
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Write to Mahita Gajanan at mahita.gajanan@time.com