Dist. 211 needs to do what's right for most students

It was many years, but I remember it well.

I was taking a Red Cross course in advanced first aid and at the previous session we had been given a test on triage. At that particular class we were reviewing our results.

We were given a scenario: there was an explosion and there were a number of injured, 20 or 25, and we had to decide in which order to treat them. Most of us chose as the first person to treat the one who was obviously the most seriously injured: unconscious, not breathing, no pulse. That was the wrong answer.

While we had remembered the basic rule of triage, treat the most seriously injured first, we had forgotten the most important rule of first aid: Do the greatest good for the greatest number.

That victim whom most of us chose as the first to treat, should have been the last. In fact, he wouldn't have survived. While those of us who chose him first would be trying to save his life, three or four other people would have died.

I'll never forget the words of our teacher: "Leave him. He's dead."

Several students thought she was being heartless. They focused on saving that one man. She focused on saving all the others.

This is emblematic of situations we sometimes encounter. When we are like the man with no pulse we want our needs to be met first. It is hard for us to see that in meeting those needs other people would be harmed. We have to learn to focus on what is the greatest good for the greatest number. And sometimes that means one person has to suffer so the many don't.

And that brings us to District 211. There is a student there who is suffering. Nobody is questioning the depth of that suffering. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) is requiring a solution that will serve that student. However, in so doing, many girls will be harmed, if only from the embarrassment of having to change clothes and shower in front of a student who, biologically, is a boy.

The OCR needs to rethink their position. They have to take a lesson from the Red Cross and do the greatest good for the greatest number. The solution proposed by the District does just that.

Gitel Hesselberg

Haifa, Israel