Do No Harm?: An Assemblage of Care, Compliance, and Resistance to North Carolina’s Parents’ Bill of Rights

Authors

Sarah Cornette, UNC Chapel Hill School of EducationFollow
William Pryor IV, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillFollow

Author ORCID Identifier

0009-0001-2625-0222

Abstract

North Carolina’s Parents’ Bill of Rights (NC-PBOR) requires school counselors to disclose sensitive student information to parents, creating profound legal-ethical dilemmas. This study examines how counselors navigate these mandates through interviews, surveys, and arts-based analysis. Findings show counselors experience institutional betrayal, ethical precarity, and emotional exhaustion, yet also engage in subtle resistance through strategic ambiguity, relational buffering, and quiet noncompliance. Methodologically, we integrate coding, poetic inquiry, and visual confection to capture affect, embodiment, and contradiction often missed by conventional analysis. By foregrounding emotion and multiplicity, we contribute to assemblage-informed policy studies and queer qualitative inquiry, while bearing witness to the human cost of legislation that constrains care.

Drawing on assemblage theory and queer inquiry, we analyze how counselors experience the policy as a site of betrayal, grief, and resistance. Through emotion coding and arts-based interpretation, we document how these professionals hold space for LGBTQ+ students while confronting laws that demand disclosure, surveillance, and silence. Our findings show that arts-based methods do more than represent emotion—they activate ethical insight and analytic depth, offering a humanizing lens on the entanglement of policy, identity, and professional responsibility.

Methodological Approach

Qualitative

DOI

https://doi.org/10.60808/ekqc-b895

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Cornette, S., & Pryor, W. (2025). Do No Harm?: An Assemblage of Care, Compliance, and Resistance to North Carolina’s Parents’ Bill of Rights. Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.60808/ekqc-b895