Clubs unable to meet. Classic novels pulled off the shelves. Sex Ed discontinued.
Students at a Defense Department-run high school on Ramstein Air Base in Germany say school has changed dramatically in the last month after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth launched a vast effort to stamp out diversity education across the military.
On Thursday, hundreds of students across three different high schools plan to stage a protest, in what they hope will be the largest walkout in the history of the Defense Department Education Activity, or DoDEA, in protest of the changes.
The DoDEA is a school system for children of U.S. military personnel and is comprised of schools from pre-K through 12th grade in the United States and around the globe.
Tristan, a student at Ramstein High School helping to coordinate the walkout, is expecting as many as 250 students to join. Students at Humphreys High School, located on Camp Humphreys in South Korea, the largest overseas U.S. military base, are also participating in the walkout, as well as students at Kaiserslautern High School, around six miles away from Ramstein High School.
The students in this story asked to go by their first names so that their parents who are servicemembers and employees would not suffer retaliation.
Hegseth has directed the military to scrub every last trace of programs related to DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion – accusing them of “dividing the force, as opposed to uniting the force.”
As part of that mission, he banned transgender people from serving in the military last month and declared identity months like Black History Month “dead” at the Defense Department. He ordered all DEI-related content taken down from the department’s website – reports on diversity in the force now turn up an “Error 404” message in the department’s data portal.
During Hegseth’s visit last month to the U.S. base in Stuttgart, Germany, around 55 students at a middle school on the base walked out of class in protest, chanting “DEI.” The school’s assistant principal said the demonstration was “orderly” and lasted around 50 minutes.
At Ramstein High, students in the LGBTQ Pride Club say it can no longer meet. Other cultural clubs, including the school’s Black Student Union, Asian Cultural Association and Ramstein Hispanic Heritage Club were also impacted, they say.
William Griffin, a spokesperson for DoDEA, said students “maintain the opportunity to convene student-sponsored, non-curriculum-related student groups” under administrative guidelines.
But student members of the Pride Club said it couldn’t meet because it technically uses federal resources to convene inside school buildings.
“The Pride Club is no longer allowed to meet because it’s being held indoors,” said Matthew, a member of the group. “And if it’s held indoors, the logic goes, basically that DoDEA is paying for the electricity and the heating and the building, so that constitutes federal funding.”
Books have also been pulled off the shelves at U.S. military schools around the world pending a “review” for diversity concepts and language.
Matthew listed high school reading list classics among those that disappeared from the shelves of Ramstein High – Fahrenheit 451, 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye.
“In effect, they’re erasing history,” said Finn. “That’s another reason why we’re protesting.”
DoDEA has yet to release a full list of which books were removed.
Students also said they were disturbed by changes in the course curriculum, including removing LGBTQ-related psychology lessons and sex education.
More: Middle schoolers protest Pete Hegseth’s DEI takedown at US base in Germany
Griffin said the books were removed temporarily. DoDEA “is reviewing its current policies and instructional resources, including books in its libraries, to ensure compliance” with the Trump administration’s policies overturning DEI, he said. “We are not able to comment on specific materials until the review is complete.”
Tristan, an LGBTQ student at the school, said he had been targeted with homophobic harassment by students emboldened by the administration’s attacks on DEI. One student “came up to me and he openly said, ‘Anybody that is a part of the LGBTQ community has a mental disorder,'” said Tristan.
“I can’t even go to the commissary anymore with my boyfriend without getting laughed at by other students,” he said. Commissaries are the supermarkets of military bases.
“Most frightening, from the student side, is the lack of clarity,” Matthew said. He said Defense Department officials haven’t clarified the new policies, or explained why certain programs and clubs are unable to meet.
“It creates this atmosphere of paranoia that keeps people from talking freely about things,” he said. “They are fearing that there’s something deeper going on that they’re not able to learn about.”
Tristan said the school was “very helpful” in planning out the protest and agreed to let it go forward. School administrators were asking Ramstein’s base commander if the students could safely bring the demonstration to the headquarters of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Africa and of NATO Allied Air Command, both located on the base.
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“DoDEA respects the rights of our students to engage in peaceful expressions of their opinions through speech and other ways provided that it is done respectfully, does not interfere with the rights of others, and does not disrupt learning in the school,” Griffin said.
But some students feared they or their parents could suffer retribution for participating.
“I’m exercising extreme caution, and I don’t know that I want to put my name on it,” said Matthew. He worried that his parents could face repercussions to their career if they were seen as violating their military mission by allowing him to join.
Tristan said he hopes Thursday’s protest shows other students “that they don’t have to be afraid to speak up against the government. They have a voice, and they should use it.”
Students at US military high school in Germany protest Hegseth's anti-DEI push – USA Today
