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  • 2022-01-24 (xsd:date)
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  • Did a Michigan School District Install Litter Boxes in Bathrooms? (en)
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  • In January 2022, a Republican party official in Michigan shared the remarkable claim that in Midland public schools, officials were accommodating furries — people who sometimes dress as animals or adopt animal alter egos — by leaving litter boxes in bathrooms so that certain students, while adopting a feline persona, could defecate in them. On Jan. 20, Michigan GOP Co-Chair Meshawn Maddock shared a video of a Midland Public Schools board of education meeting, along with the following description: Kids who identify as 'furries' get a litter box in the school bathroom. Parent heroes will TAKE BACK our schools. Later that day, Midland Public Schools Superintendent Michael Sharrow firmly denied those claims. In a message circulated to district staff and parents, and also published on Facebook, he wrote: There is no truth whatsoever to this false statement/accusation! There have never been litter boxes within MPS schools. Snopes has not yet been able to find any evidence to corroborate the claim that a school or schools in Midland, Michigan, have accommodated students adopting a feline alter ego by placing litter boxes in bathrooms. The person most prominently responsible for making that claim — a local woman named Lisa Hansen — did not provide any such evidence to Snopes when we asked her for it. We cannot completely rule out the possibility that a litter box might briefly have been placed in a public school bathroom as a joke or a prank, with its presence there subsequently being misinterpreted or misrepresented as being part of a broader policy or trend, but no evidence has surfaced to support that speculation. Hansen made the claim in question during the public comment segment of a Dec. 20, 2021, meeting of the Midland School District Board of Education. Her contribution can be watched in full below, and an excerpted transcript follows: After Hansen's claims were shared widely on social media, Sharrow unequivocally refuted them, writing: Snopes asked Hansen whether she could provide any concrete evidence to support her claims. Responding by email, Hansen did not provide the evidence requested, but wrote: Asked whether she could put us in contact with anyone who could attest to the presence of the litter box in the bathroom, Hansen said she would try to find witnesses. We will update this fact check if we receive corroborating (or contradictory) accounts. (en)
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