If you had to pick any one song to listen to in the hallway over and over, it should be “The Times They Are A-Changin’” by Bob Dylan because times here are changing with an increasingly inclusive generation. Senior Mia (Chris) Santos, a transgender student, is in the running for Prom Queen.

“I’m happy! I’m excited,” Santos said. “I feel like it’s a revolution in our school. Everybody, like minorities, are rising up; not just people in the LGBTQ community, but also like Hispanics and African-Americans, because I’m also Hispanic, so it [would be like] a win for both.”

Santos believes that her prom queen nomination is a break away from the heteronormative bias of prom court: white, heterosexual and cisgendered.

“There are [usually] only white girls winning, and we need to break that,” Santos said.

Santos is supported by other students who feel she is taking a stand and making a bold statement: boast your gender identity, accept who you are and be yourself. There are some who have made their negative opinions on her gender identity clear on social media sites such as Twitter.

“I’ve had hate from the Internet, but it doesn’t really affect me because I’m better than that,” Santos said. “Haters make me famous. Without all of this sort of hating on me, then I probably wouldn’t have that much hype right now.”

However, Santos’s strong will and determination to fight adversity against transgender and gender-fluid students run prevalent in her confidence in herself and in the entire transgender community as a whole.

“I have a lot of supporters,” Santos said. “So many people that I don’t even know have messaged me or have said to me how I shouldn’t care, and it just makes me really happy how our school is pretty open, except for a few people but who are they? Irrelevant… ”

Santos has been transitioning since sophomore year, but said she knew she was meant to be female ever since she was born. Emotionally, the transition has made Santos feel more “comfortable in [her] skin and less caring of what people think about [her].” This nomination to Prom Court as potential Prom Queen strengthened her confidence in herself and her comfortability in her own body.

“I’m happier with myself, and so other people’s opinions don’t really matter to my happiness,” she said.

David Maya, one of the leaders for the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) and avid supporter of the LGTBQ community, supports Santos’s breakthrough and also sees her nomination as the school’s way of supporting transgender students.

“I think it shows that we as a school are being supportive of her,” Santos said. “I believe she is the first transgender student running for prom [court].”

However, the labels for Prom King and Prom Queen may spark some discrimination in the eyes of transgender or gender-fluid students.

“I believe there shouldn’t be ‘king’ or ‘queen.’ We should not be identifying students as something or the other. At that moment, when you have a ‘king’ or a ‘queen,’ you’re just saying that they need to be a female or a male, and we shouldn’t have that because in reality, there are so many people that don’t identify with either or,” Maya said. “They’re just gender-fluid, and they do not feel that they can be put in a box. As a school I think that we have to be thinking about [prom court] and make it so that it’s open to anybody else, not only students that identify with either male or female.”

Fortunately, Santos identifies as female. In fact, Santos transitioning publically and running for Prom Queen has given other students the confidence to be who they really are, whatever gender or not.

“It makes me happy knowing that I influenced someone in a good way, to be who they are,” Santos said.

In response to a question regarding her advice to students in the midst of coming out, Santos has a statement to the transgender and gender-fluid community.

“Go for it. Do you, boo. Live the life the way you were really meant to,” Santos said. “Be who you are and, despite the odds, you can overcome anything. Just because you’re a minority doesn’t mean you can’t accomplish things.”

This social breakthrough may just give other students the confidence to come out of their shell and claim their true identity, whether it be transgender or genderless.

“I think they should know that I’m not the first nor the last,” Santos said. “A lot of people still haven’t come out to the everyday […] through the school. It’s funny because they might not think there’s a lot [of transgender/gender-fluid students] at the school, but they’ll see at the reunion really how many there are.”

*UPDATE: This story was written before Prom; Santos was ultimately named Prom Queen.