By T- PETTI
Holyoke Community College
Is that a boy or a girl? How do you know? When and why does it matter?
While most individuals take these questions and their answers for granted, they create significant implications for our society and the institutions that define them. Chief among those institutions are colleges and universities, where, according to a 2007 survey by the National Gender Public Advocacy Coalition, one third of students report being harassed or discriminated against on campus for not fitting expectations of masculinity or femininity.
Statistics like these cannot be ignored when preparing the next generation to lead a more just, open and educated world.
At Holyoke Community College, we are meeting this challenge by re-evaluating the policies that affect transgender staff and students.
This semester, we begin a new series called "TransCampus," a campus-community education tool that will introduce some of the key issues facing transgender people. These efforts mirror the national trends of colleges across the country.
Two-thirds of the nation's top 25 schools have already taken action, including Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Chicago.
In total, 147 schools have passed specific non-discrimination policies; 141 have gender-neutral rest rooms, and 30 are providing gender-neutral housing.
The term "transgender" is often used as an umbrella term to for someone whose self-identification or expression challenges normative notions of "male" and "female."
It can include, but is not limited to, individuals who identify simply as "trans," that is, female-to-male or male-to- female transsexuals; "genderqueers," persons who are intersex and choose to identify as trans; or persons who otherwise cross traditional gender categories.
Individuals who identify as transgender may have unique and often complex needs when attending and institution of higher education.
A student born as a female named Jane, for example, may actually identify as male, use masculine pronouns, and prefer the name James.
Such a student may face challenges when using gendered rest rooms, participating in athletics, or when forced to use his female birth name on his academic records and course work.
Holyoke Community College believes that implementing the TransCampus series will mediate these challenges, increase awareness of transgender issues and create a more inclusive campus climate.
The series is designed to educate the entire campus community on transgender issues and includes a six-week mini-course designed specifically for faculty and staff, who are most likely to encounter and be aware of trans staff and students.
Our transgender speakers panel on Feb. 20 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. in the PeoplesBank Conference Room of the campus' Kittredge Center is open to the public.
TransCampus will provide an introduction to transgender terminology and models of gender identity, explore the effects of transphobia, and highlight the ways in which various facets of identity, such as race, class, and gender, intersect to form our opinions and shape society.
The series will focus specifically on creating a more diverse and inclusive campus climate that is safe for all students regardless of their gender identity or expression and will examine the ways in which transgender issues are both similar to and different from the needs the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities at large.
T- Petti is the creator of the TransCampus series and is currently working
as the Community Resource Liaison at Holyoke Community College for the
Massachusetts Campus Compact AmeriCorps*VISTA program. For more information on the TransCampus series or related resources, T- can be reached at (413) 552-2511 or via e-mail to firstname.lastname@example.org.