Local
Gay-Straight Alliance summit draws 130 students
Potomac event is first-of-its-kind in D.C. area
The Bullis School in Potomac hosted the first annual GSA Student Summit this week. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
At least 130 students from 17 independent, private high schools and middle schools in the D.C. metro area met on Tuesday morning in what was billed as the region’s first annual Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) Student Summit.
The event took place on the campus of the Bullis School in Potomac, Md., whose GSA group organized and hosted the gathering, according Bullis students and administrators.
“We just started the GSA this year, so I’m really proud of everybody who has been involved with this,” said Bullis 10th grader Sarah Holliday, who helped organize the summit.
“And seeing everybody come out here today is really heart-warming – that everybody still cares about this and wants to make a difference,” she said.
The New York-based Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which keeps track of and provides assistance to GSAs throughout the country, says 4,000 such groups have registered with GLSEN.
“Gay-Straight Alliances are student clubs that work to improve school climate for all students, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression,” a statement on the GLSEN website says.
“Found in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and U.S. military bases, GSAs have become one of the fastest-growing student clubs in the country,” the GLSEN statement says.
Among the schools represented by GSA members at Monday’s summit were Sidwell Friends School, Georgetown Day School, St. Albans School, National Cathedral School, and Edmund Burke School – all in D.C.
Others included Potomac School in McLean; St. Stephens and St. Agnes Schools in Alexandria; Landon School in Bethesda; and Connelly School of the Holy Child in Potomac.
The summit began with a plenary session in which Bullis Head of School Gerald Boarman welcomed both student participants and teachers and counselors that accompanied the students from their respective schools.
“It’s very important and apropos that at Bullis, where we are open in every way, embracing every individual who crosses through the hallways, that we’re hosting this event,” Boarman said.
“You are the participators,” he said. “You are the game changers. And I’m hoping you’ll take that not only as your mission but continue to do it throughout your years, not only in high school but in life.”
Tonia Poteat (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Tonia Poteat, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health and an out lesbian, delivered the keynote speech at the summit.
Poteat, who holds a Ph.D. in public health, told of her involvement in AIDS prevention and education programs in Africa and of her work on behalf of LGBT rights causes in the U.S.
“We must challenge what is and think about what must be so that we can look at the social forces that created inequality and make a difference in them,” she said.
Following the plenary session the students met among themselves in two separate workshop sessions in which groups of about a dozen sat at conference tables to share ideas about operating GSAs.
Teachers, school counselors and administrators conferred separately at two conference tables to share their experiences in facilitating GSA groups at their respective schools.
Cathy Chu, youth leadership manager for SMYAL, the D.C.-based LGBT youth advocacy and service group, attended the summit as an observer. She told the gathering about SMYAL’s new initiative to help coordinate GSAs in the D.C. area.
SMYAL Executive Director Andrew Barnett said SMYAL is aware of about 77 GSAs in public schools in the D.C. metro area.
In interviews at the conclusion of the summit, nearly all of the students who spoke with the Blade said their respective schools were generally supportive of the school’s GSA.
Several of the students said their schools welcomed the annual GSA-initiated “Day of Silence” in which LGBT students and their straight allies remain silent in school and in all classes. The silence is intended to draw attention to anti-LGBT bullying and violence, which organizers say has had devastating effects on those targeted for such behavior.
“I think Bullis is a great GSA environment,” said Sean Watkinson, a Bullis senior. “The GSA has a huge impact on the school. We do a lot with the Day of Silence and there is just a lot of talk about it and we have a lot of support from the school as a whole.”
Some of the students said members of their school GSAs or other similar groups remain cautious about identifying themselves as gay.
Ian Dabney of Landon School of Bethesda said that school has a group called Ally Council, which has no “set member list” but tries to accomplish the same goals as a GSA.
“We don’t have meetings very often,” he said. “But we’re trying to get it going more often and get more people involved in it.”
Fellow Landon student Bobby Bolen, a freshman, said the Ally Council was intended to be “less structured than a GSA to make it less uncomfortable.”
Added Bolen, “You can go if you’re just an ally or if you’re gay – either one. It doesn’t make you choose. The term GSA makes some kids uncomfortable.”
When asked what the gay-straight breakdown was among GSA members at Bullis, junior Rayna Tyson said the group prefers not to press students into making those distinctions.
“No, especially when we have our meetings and we’re all getting together we don’t distinguish between who are the allies and like who is gay – like raise your hand if you’re gay?” she said.
“I think it is really about coming together and everyone being treated equally no matter what. We don’t have to put it out there,” she said. “It’s just great that people are here today who are gay, straight – it doesn’t matter. They are supportive and that’s what matters.”
(Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
District of Columbia
Man charged with carjacking, kidnapping after having sex in D.C. park pleads guilty
Arrest followed year-long investigation into incident at Fort Dupont Park
A D.C. man initially charged with armed carjacking, armed kidnapping, and armed robbery of a male victim he met and with whom he engaged in sex at D.C.’s Fort Dupont Park in September 2024 pleaded guilty on March 12 to two lesser charges as part of a plea bargain deal offered by prosecutors.
Records filed in D.C. Superior Court show that Da’Andre Pardlow, 31, who has been held in jail since the time of his arrest in December 2025, pleaded guilty to unarmed carjacking and possession of a firearm during a crime of violence. Court records show the agreement includes a recommendation by prosecutors that Pardlow be sentenced to seven years in prison.
The agreement allows him to withdraw the guilty plea if the judge rejects the sentencing recommendation and calls for a harsher sentence. He is scheduled to be sentenced by Superior Court Judge Robert Salermo on May 29.
Details of the incident that led to Pardlow’s arrest and guilty plea are included in a 12-page arrest affidavit prepared by U.S. Park Police detective Christopher Edmund, the lead investigator in the case.
According to the affidavit, which is part of the public court records, Park Police received a call at approximately 6:30 a.m. on Sept. 13, 2024, regarding an armed robbery that occurred around 3 a.m. that day at D.C.’s Fort Dupont Park. The affidavit says Park Police officers drove the person who called, who is identified only as Victim 1 or V-1, from his residence to the Park Police Anacostia Operations facility where he was interviewed.
“V-1 reported that they were at their residence at approximately 2:30 a.m. on September 13, 2024, and decided to drive to Fort Dupont Park in hopes of meeting a man for a sexual encounter,” the affidavit states. “V-1 arrived at Fort Dupont Park at approximately 3:00 a.m. and parked their vehicle on the south side of Alabama Avenue, SE, in Washington, D.C. adjacent to the park entrance,” the affidavit continues.
It says the victim stated the park was empty and he decided to leave, but while walking back to his car he encountered a black male appearing in his 20s or 30s and gave a full description of the man’s appearance and clothing, saying he was wearing a ski mask.
“V-1 and the male conversed and agreed to engage in consensual sexual acts on a bench under the pavilion near the restroom,” the affidavit says. It says V-1 then told detectives that the man, who is initially identified only as Suspect 1 or S-1, “had ejaculated onto V-1’s face. V-1 then used a napkin that he found on the ground nearby to wipe S-1’s semen from V-1’s face. V-1 then discarded the napkin on the ground.”
The affidavit states that investigators later recovered the napkin and through DNA testing linked the semen to Pardlow. But prior to that, it says during their sexual encounter in the park V-1 agreed to suspect 1’s request that he take off all his clothes.
“When V-1 disrobed, S-1 got behind V-1 and held a hard, metal item that V-1 believed to be a handgun, to the back of V-1’s head,” according to the affidavit. It says V-1 added that S-1 “threatened to shoot him ‘over and over again’” if he did not comply with S-1’s demands to surrender his phone and wallet, provide the code to access the phone, and then to take possession of and drive V-1’s car to a nearby bank, with V-1 sitting in the passenger’s seat, to withdraw money from V-1’s bank account. The affidavit says he withdrew $500 from V-1’s account at a Bank of America ATM at 3821 Minnesotta Ave., NE.
“S-1 then drove V-1 back to the park and told them to get their clothes, which were still in the pavilion area,” the affidavit says. “When V-1 exited the vehicle, S-1 drove out of the park in V-1’s vehicle at a high rate of speed toward Massachusetts Avenue,” it says. “V-1 walked back to their residence and contacted the police.”
The affidavit says that over the course of the next several months investigators used tracking devices linked to V-1’s car, cell phone, and Apple Watch that Pardlow had taken to locate the car and a residence where Pardlow was possibly living.
The Park Police investigators also pulled up FBI DNA records to identify a suspect that matched the DNA sample taken from the napkin V1 used at the park to a man arrested in Prince George’s County, Md., on an unrelated charge of Use of a Firearm In A Violent Felony. That person turned out to be Da’Andre Pardlow, the affidavit states.
It says investigators obtained additional evidence linking Pardlow to the park incident involving V-1, including video images of his face from a Bank of America security camera at the time he withdraws money from V-1’s ATM account. A tracking of Pardlow’s own mobile phone also placed him at the site of the park at the time of his alleged interaction with V-1.
When Park Police detectives first interviewed Pardlow at the Eastern Correctional Institute prison in Westover, Md., where he was being held in connection with the unrelated firearm arrest, “he denied having ever been to Fort Dupont Park since he was in high school and said that he had no involvement in this incident,” the affidavit says.
Court records show a warrant was obtained for his arrest on Nov. 25, 2025, for the Fort Dupont incident and he was officially charged on Dec. 17, 2025, with Armed Carjacking, Robbery While Armed, and Kidnapping While Armed.
Pardlow’s attorney, Patrick Nowak, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on Pardlow’s decision to plead guilty to the lesser charges of Unarmed Carjacking and Possession of a Firearm During A Crime of Violence, with the other charges being dropped by prosecutors with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C.
District of Columbia
D.C. journalist, video producer Sean Bartel dies at 48
Beloved member of Gay Flag Football League found deceased on hiking trail in Argentina
Sean Christopher Bartel, 48, who began his career as a television news reporter and news anchor at stations in Louisville, Ky., and Evansville, Ind., before serving as Senior Video Producer for the D.C.-based International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union from 2013 to 2024, was found deceased on a hiking trail near a glacier in Argentina on or around March 15, according to a report by an Argentine newspaper.
The newspaper Clarín reports no foul play was suspected regarding his death, and other local media reports indicate authorities believe he suffered some sort of accident while on the hiking trail.
The Clarín report says Bartel arrived in Argentina on March 3 and visited Buenos Aires and the city of El Chaltén, which is near Argentina’s Los Glaciares National Park and a glacial lagoon popular with hikers. It says his body was found on the trail leading to the glacier.
“The D.C. Gay Flag Football League is heartbroken to learn of the passing of Sean Bartel, one of the most devoted members this league has ever known,” the organization said in a statement. “The story of DCGFFL could not be told without Sean.”
“He was not only a dedicated teammate and a model league member – he was our storyteller and our champion, honoring the competitive greatness, the radiant humor, and the beautiful bonds that make our community so special,” the statement says.
It adds that for years, Bartel served as “our man behind the camera, he drew our community tighter by portraying us with the skill of a professional and the care of a family member.”
Bartel’s LinkedIn page shows he most recently worked for 12 years as Senior Video Producer for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which is described as North America’s largest labor union.
Matt Spense, a spokesperson for the union, told the Washington Blade that Bartel resigned from his job there in 2024 to pursue other career endeavors, but he didn’t know what he did career wise after that time.
Bartel’s LinkedIn page shows he served as a video producer and account supervisor at the Edelman global communications firm based in D.C. from 2010-2013. Prior to that, he worked as a reporter for Sirius XM Radio, Inc. from 2007 to 2012. It shows that from a little over a year — from 2009 to 2010 — he worked as video producer and account executive for the firm North Ridge Communications, but it doesn’t give the company’s location.
He began his career in journalism, his LinkedIn page shows, as a reporter and news and sports anchor at the WHAS TV station in Louisville, Ky., from January 2005 through January 2008.
It says he received a bachelor’s degree in Sports Marketeing and Management in 1999 from Indiana University in Bloomington and a master’s degree from the School of Media and Public Affairs from D.C.’s George Washington University in 2010.
The Blade couldn’t immediately obtain information about surviving family members or funeral arrangements.
Cameroon
Gay Cameroonian immigrant will be freed from ICE detention — for now
Ludovic Mbock’s homeland criminalizes homosexuality
By ANTONIO PLANAS | An immigration judge on Friday issued a $4,000 bond for a Cameroonian immigrant and regional gaming champion held in federal immigration detention for the past three weeks.
The ruling will allow Ludovic Mbock, of Oxon Hill, to return to Maryland from a Georgia facility this weekend, his family and attorney said.
“Realistically, by tomorrow. Hopefully, by today,” said Mbock’s attorney, Edward Neufville. “We are one step closer to getting Ludovic justice.”
The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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