Transgender Awareness Week has come and gone, but SLU is no different, as little was done to acknowledge the event. As a transgender first-year student, it is often discouraging to feel invisible and unincluded within the conversation of diversity at SLU. During my first semester here I have seen little acknowledgment of my identity and even less inclusion.
During a meeting on Nov. 27, I interviewed some Spectrum members to gauge how they feel the school administration supports transgender individuals and their response was overwhelmingly negative. They see little done to include trans students by administration. However, the members agree that the attitude towards trans identities by the student body is generally positive.
Why then does SLU welcome our identities yet leave us without true inclusion? I interviewed Ntsieng Botsane, a first- year international student, asking her if she was aware that it was Transgender Awareness Week two weeks ago. “No, I didn’t know,” she said. Then, I asked her if she knew that three weeks ago was Purple Week. “Yes, I knew. You saw purple everywhere and saw the theme in Dana, the student center, basically everywhere.”
Granted, it is encouraging to know that students support and respect me and my trans brothers and sisters, but what is support without action? Support without action is only as much help as standing and watching a house burn down and saying to the owner “That’s tragic, you should call the fire department.” SLU is our home away from home and we deserve to not only feel acknowledged by our school, but also included because we do exist.
Transgender people are such a small amount of the population and for some, their identity is invisible to others, so it’s easy to forget that we exist. But we do. You may not know, or maybe you do know. Either way, we exist and we deserve to be included.
I have no idea if you’ll ever see this, but I agree with you that there is not enough integration of trans identities on campus. Professors and students alike ignore my pronouns and make insensitive jokes. Club sports teams don’t have clear policies on athletes who take HRT. Our health and counseling center knows absolutely nothing about trans issues. There are very few resources for those who begin to question their identity, and our queer spaces are cis gay oriented. They never ask us what we want to see, and instead act like changing the names of gender neutral bathrooms to all gender bathrooms make a tangible difference. But that can change. We need trans students like you to start changing things on campus. If the author of this sees this, please message me on Facebook (Mel Olsson) and we’ll see what we can do.