Draped in a pride flag, 18 year-old Bryce Dershem stepped up to the lectern at his New Jersey high school’s graduation and began delivering the valedictorian address (watch above).

“After I came out as queer freshman year, I felt so alone. I didn’t know who to turn to,” Dershem said. He planned to talk about his struggles with mental health – he had spent time in recovery for anorexia while in high school

But Dershem’s microphone cut out. He believes the technical mishap was contrived, designed to give cover to a censorship attempt.

Dr. Robert Tull, the principal of Eastern Regional High School in Voorhees, removed the microphone and grabbed Dershem’s speech. Tull told him he must deliver a different address, “one that had been rewritten without any mention of the teenager’s queer identity or mental health struggles,” according to The Washington Post.

“The principal, Dr. Tull, he came up to the stage, and he grabbed the paper that I had brought and crumpled it in front of me,” Dershem told TODAY. “And pointed to the speech he had written for me, effectively, and told me I was to say that and nothing else.”

Dershem was told his speech wasn’t “his therapy session.”

“I did feel censored,” Dershem told TODAY. “I felt as though they were trying to regulate the message I was going to say and take away the parts of my identity that I’m really proud of.”

But Dershem wasn’t deterred. He delivered the rest of his speech from memory, talking about the pandemic’s impact on mental health.

“Part of our identity, our year, our struggle is 2021,” Dershem told his classmates from the stage. “We’re still here though. We adapted to something we never thought possible.”

“I thought, ‘I have worked this hard and I deserve to be able to tell my story and give this message of inclusivity,’ because I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it,” he told The Washington Post.

“All of a sudden, all of my classmates and people in the audience stand up and gave me a standing ovation,” Dershem told TODAY. “It meant the world to me.”

Dershem had submitted his speech in advance for approval, as is required, and the school had him rewrite it with the help of an English teacher. But even that version, according to Dershem, drew the principal’s ire.

Robert Cloutier, the superintendent of Eastern Camden County Regional School District, denied that Dershem was asked to remove references to his sexual identity. He told NBC Philadelphia, “Every year, all student speakers are assisted in shaping the speech, and all student speeches — which are agreed upon and approved in advance — are kept in the binder on the lectern for the principal to conduct the graduation ceremony.”

Dershem said the community’s support has been extremely positive. One teacher came up to him after the ceremony and passed along a moving message.

“She hugged me and she said that her son had passed away due to suicide over quarantine and my speech had just meant so much to her, and she really wished he had gotten to hear it, too,” he told The Washington Post. “I thought, ‘This is the one person — this is the one person that I made feel less alone in that audience.’ That was everything for me.”