Gay teens get harsher punishments than straight, study finds
By Donna St. George
Monday, December 6, 2010; A08 – Washignton Post
Gay and lesbian teens in the United States are about 40 percent more likely than their straight peers to be punished by schools, police and the courts, according to a study published Monday, which finds that girls are especially at risk for unequal treatment.
The research, described as the first national look at sexual orientation and teen punishment, comes as a spate of high-profile bullying and suicide cases across the country have focused attention on the sometimes hidden cruelties of teen life.
The study, from Yale University, adds another layer, finding substantial disparities between gay and straight teens in school expulsions, arrests, convictions and police stops. The harsher approach is not explained by differences in misconduct, the study says.
“The most striking difference was for lesbian and bisexual girls, and they were two to three times as likely as girls with similar behavior to be punished,” said Kathryn Himmelstein, lead author of the study, published in the journal Pediatrics.
Why the punishment gap exists is less clear.
It could be that lesbian, gay and bisexual teens who got in trouble didn’t get the same breaks as other teens – say, for youthful age or self-defense, Himmelstein said. Or it could be that girls in particular were punished more often because of discomfort with or bias toward some who don’t fit stereotypes of femininity.
”It’s definitely troubling to see such a disparity,” Himmelstein said.
”It may very well be not intentional,” she said. “I think most people who work with youth want to do the best they can for young people and treat them fairly, but our findings show that’s not happening.”
The punishments can be damaging, she said. Teens expelled from school have higher dropout rates, and involvement in the criminal justice system can affect a range of opportunities, including housing eligibility and college financial aid.
”I find it tragic, ” said Clara McCreery, 18, co-president of the Gay-Straight Alliance at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda. “I wonder if some people misinterpret the way some gay girls choose to dress as a sign of aggression.”
Stacey Horn, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, called the study important and compared the findings to racial disparities in criminal sentencing. “To me, it is saying there is some kind of internal bias that adults are not aware of that is impacting the punishment of this group,” she said.
The study brings punishment differences for gay teens into focus at a time when public concern about torment and bullying is heightened. In September, an 18-year-old Rutgers University student jumped off a bridge to his death after his gay sexual encounter was allegedly filmed by a roommate on a webcam and announced on Twitter.
Probing the consequences of teen misconduct, the new study examines behaviors that include lying to parents, drinking, shoplifting and vandalizing, as well as more serious offenses such as burglary, drug sales and physical violence.
Using data from more than 15,000 middle school and high school students who were followed into early adulthood as part of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, researchers compared categories of misconduct against six punishments. The interviews used for the study started in 1994-95 and continued until 2001-02, but researchers said they expect the findings would be similar today because the institutions involved have not dramatically changed.
Nearly 1,500 of the participants in the study identified themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual, but more than 2,300 reported having felt a same-sex attraction at some point in their lives. More than 800 were in a same-sex relationship.
The results showed that, for similar misconduct, gay adolescents were roughly 1.25 to 3 times more likely to be sanctioned than their straight peers.
The sexual-orientation disparity was greatest for girls. Girls who identified themselves as lesbian or bisexual experienced 50 percent more police stops and reported more than twice as many juvenile arrests and convictions as other teen girls in similar trouble, the study said.
Andrew Barnett, executive director of the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League, which serves 300 teens a year in Washington, said he was not surprised by the findings.
“This is a symptom of school administrators, teachers, court officials, police officers – anyone who works with youth – not necessarily being equipped to handle the challenges” faced by the teens in their care, he said. “It’s much easier to punish the youth than to work with them and figure out why they may keep getting in fights and what is leading to this behavior.”
Hien Le, 17, president of the Gay-Straight Alliance at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, said she sees no tendency to punish gay students in her school. But she and other teens said parents often become more punitive when they disapprove of a son or daughter’s sexual orientation.
“Your parents are the ones who are supposed to be supportive, but it isn’t always that way,” she said.
“I think it happens more than people think,” said Caroline Callahan, 16, president of the Gay-Straight Alliance at Langley High School in McLean.
The study’s data set was not large enough to allow for an additional analysis by race, but Himmelstein and others said that was an important area for further study.
Jody Marksamer, a staff attorney and youth project director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco, said the study brings data to what advocates have seen for years: that biases, overt and subtle, often play out in courts, in schools and with police.
Gay youths are often grappling with family tensions and harassment by peers and sometimes with depression or homelessness, he said. Harsher punishments can make for “a cascade of effects” that can “move them from the schools to the criminal justice system.”
Joseph Kosciw, senior director of research and strategic initiatives of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, said that more needs to be done in schools. “I think it really calls for professional development about how to address” issues related to sexual orientation, he said, “and how to address bullying and harassment when they happen.”
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WITHIN THE OPENLY GAY COMMUNITY AT ATLANTA’S MOREHOUSE COLLEGE, THERE’S A SUBGROUP: GENDER BENDERS WHO ROCK MAKEUP, MARC JACOBS TOTE BAGS, SKY-HIGH HEELS AND BEYONCÉ- STYLE HAIR WEAVES. CAN A MAN OF MOREHOUSE BE GAY? ABSOLUTELY. BUT CAN HE BE A WOMAN? MEET THE PLASTICS.
Written by Aliya S. King and Published by VIBE Online, an online version of VIBE Magazine
Diamond Martin Poulin, 20, teetering in strappy sandals with three-inch heels, steps into an eclectic clothing boutique in Little Five Points, a quaint cluster of shops and restaurants two and a half miles outside of downtown Atlanta. “Ooooh,” squeals Diamond. “What about this?” Holding up a white floor-skimming skirt with an eyelet hem, he swoons. The proprietor of the store looks up at Diamond, does a double take, and immediately picks up the cordless phone at the register. “There’s a man in here with heels on!” she whispers loudly into the phone. Diamond raises his eyebrows and continues browsing the racks. He shrugs when asked if the comment bothers him. “Isn’t it true?” he says, chuckling. “There is a man in here with heels on.”
Nibbling on sushi later that day, Diamond explains why he left after one year at Morehouse. A bastion for producing leaders in politics, community service and medicine, Morehouse College has long been viewed as the ultimate HBCU for young Black men, who are conferred with the mystique of being “Men of Morehouse.” Established in 1867 in Augusta, Georgia, as the Augusta Institute, the school counts such luminaries as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Atlanta’s first Black mayor, Maynard H. Jackson, Jr.; financier Reginald E. Davis; School Daze writer/director Spike Lee; the late Keith “Guru” Elam of Gang Starr; and the late Def Jam exec Shakir Stewart among its graduates.
That pedigree is what brought Diamond to Morehouse, but he says the school’s social conservatism drove him out. In October of last year, the Morehouse College administration announced a new “appropriate attire policy.” The dress code stated that students, referred to as “Renaissance Men,” were not allowed to wear caps, do-rags, sunglasses or sagging pants on the Morehouse campus or at college-sponsored events. But what raised most eyebrows was the rule about women’s clothing: no wearing of dresses, tops, tunics, purses or pumps.
The new dress code resulted in a flurry of media coverage, prompting Dr. William Bynum, Jr., vice president for Student Services, to release a statement to several news outlets: “We are talking about five students who are living a gay lifestyle that is leading them to dress a way we do not expect in Morehouse men.” During a recent visit to the campus, the poet Saul Williams wore a skirt in solidarity.
“Morehouse wasn’t ready for me,” says Diamond, who has the word “unbreakable” tattooed on his collarbone and the acronym C.R.E.A.M (“Cash Rules Everything Around Me” coined by rap group Wu Tang Clan) wrapped around his right wrist. “I’m about freedom of expression. I’m about being whomever you truly are inside. I came to Morehouse because of all the historical leaders that attended and impacted the world so heavily. You know, I really wanted to follow in their footsteps. I don’t think Morehouse believes that someone like me—someone who wears heels and dresses—can uphold that reputation. But they’re wrong.”
“We respect the identity and choices of all young men at Morehouse,” Dr. Bynum said via email. “However, the Morehouse leadership development model sets a certain standard of how we expect young men to dress, and this attire does not fit within the model. Our proper attire policy expresses that standard.”
Diamond now attends American InterContinental University, majoring in fashion marketing and design. “I want to, like, teach at Parsons. Or you know, maybe even in London—who knows?”
Although it has never been officially confirmed, it’s not too far off the mark to believe that those “five students” at whom the appropriate attire policy was directed included Diamond and his crew, the Plastics. The group is loosely made up of seven or eight former and current Morehouse students, some of whom share a modest townhouse in Atlanta. Their name is a nod to the A-list crowd depicted in the 2004 movie Mean Girls.
The Plastics all assume that the recent appropriate attire policy was aimed directly at their personal freedom of expression, which sometimes includes foundation, cross-dressing, and even taking female hormones.
“I’ve always been into clothes, shoes, hair and everything,” says Diamond, who was born and raised in Providence, R.I. He says there’s a good chance he’ll transition into a woman at some point. “My mother says I always played dress-up in her clothes, my grandmother’s clothes. I’d even get my brother to do it sometimes. That’s just always been me—pushing the envelope of what I’m supposed to be as a man.”
So does Diamond really consider herself a man? At the question, he groans. “Yes, I refer to myself as a man, you know, to relieve any confusion. Sometimes people don’t understand the whole androgyny thing. There’s always the question: Well, what are you? Yes, I’m a man. I like women’s clothes. And yeah, I’m gay. But I don’t want that to define me. How come people can’t just see me as a person?”
But some of the other men of Morehouse definitely don’t see Diamond that way. Early in his first—and last—year, Diamond had a run-in that signaled the beginning of the end of his time at the esteemed institution.
“I was in the cafeteria, and I had on this cropped hooded sweatshirt. So my stomach was out,” he recalls. “I had on a nice pair of jeans and some sandals. And this boy, a football player, said something that sounded like ‘faggot.’ Before I could even stop myself, I threw my plate of food at him. That’s not even my style. I’m more of a middle-finger kind of person. We ended up yelling at each other for a few minutes, but nothing really came out of it. He could have hit me, but he didn’t. But he didn’t have to. I was already hurt and embarrassed.”
While Diamond insists he’s happier at AIU, his tone and demeanor suggest that he wishes he’d had the opportunity to prove his worth at Morehouse. “I wanted to go to an HBCU,” he says, dipping shrimp tempura into soy sauce. “I wanted the whole African-American experience. I thought it would be a beautiful thing.”
After leaving Morehouse, Diamond would return occasionally to see friends at the school and use the computer lab. Earlier this year, after the new dress code was enacted, he was asked to leave by school security officers. “I had my Nicki Minaj-style Chinese bangs,” says Diamond, a defiant twinkle in his eyes. “I showed them my ID from AIU. I didn’t go to the school, so the dress code should not have applied to me. But they wanted me off campus anyway.”
Kevin Rome, Ph.D., Morehouse class of 1989, is the former vice president for Student Services for the College. He says that people like Diamond are a small minority of the students at the College, and shouldn’t make up such a large percentage of the press the school has received about the appropriate attire policy. “There are nearly 3,000 students at Morehouse, and maybe three that [the ban on women’s attire] applies to. We’re giving such a large influence on a minute population. It’s not representative of the school.”
This is not the first time Morehouse has had to deal with controversy surrounding its gay community. In November, 2002, Morehouse student Gregory Love suffered a fractured skull after being beaten with a baseball bat in a dormitory bathroom shower. A fellow student, Aaron Price, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and served seven for assault and battery. The attack was reportedly prompted by what was thought to be a sexual advance from Love.
Diamond believes he’s a trendsetter. While the population may be small now, he sees the gender benders as a growing group. And as for the future gender benders at Morehouse, Diamond is hopeful. “Even though I’m gone, the Plastics are still represented at Morehouse,” says Diamond. “And I think as time goes on, the administration will have to accept the different types of men enrolled. They need to look to the future. It didn’t work out for me, but I put in the work for people like me to come to Morehouse.”
Over brunch, Brian Alston, 21, and Michael Leonard, 19, nibble on biscuits, as they discuss the appropriate attire policy at Morehouse College. “This is not a purse. It’s a tote,” sniffs Michael, a junior majoring in business marketing, holding up his Marc Jacobs bag. Both he and Brian (pictured left), a senior majoring in sociology, describe themselves as androgynous. And both toe the line when it comes to the newly installed rules. Today, they’re rocking foundation, tweezed eyebrows, flawless manicures and glossy lips. Michael, a tall, lanky man with flawless skin, is wearing skin-tight denim cutoffs and an oxford shirt unbuttoned to the chest. He peppers his speech with expressions like “turn it,” as in turn it out. Brian, a slight brown-skinned figure in skinny jeans, goes by the nickname Bri. “I don’t see why a man of Morehouse can’t wear makeup,” says Michael, his forkful of grits perched in the air. “And I don’t see why a man of Morehouse can’t wear pumps and a purse.” Michael takes a bite of food, pauses, and smiles. His teeth are super straight and blindingly white. “And I don’t know why a Morehouse man can’t become a woman.”
Michael—who lives with Diamond and his boyfriend, Eric—and Brian, who has an off-campus apartment, are two of the current students at Morehouse who proudly call themselves members of the Plastics. “When I first got here, the androgynous kids were called the Glams,” Brian explains. “And then one day we were all sitting together on Brown Street and some straight guys walked by and called us the Plastics. Straight boys are the ones who gave us the name.”
While the two admit that the relationship between the Plastics and the straight community is fraught with issues, they say the rest of the gay community who can be downright hostile. “The gays hate us,” says Brian plainly.
“It’s because we have a certain aura,” says Michael. “We don’t care what people think about us when it comes to how we dress and carry ourselves. Some people are uncomfortable with it.”
Rome agrees with Michael. “The Morehouse man is defined by his contributions to society,” says Rome. “Not the way he dresses or how he identifies. I honestly don’t think we should allow differences to have an impact on what we give to the world. I have a 5-year-old son, and I want him to go to a college where he would feel welcomed and feel like he mattered—no matter who or what he was.” Rome, now the vice chancellor for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management at North Carolina Central University, says that if he’d been employed by Morehouse at the time of the vote for the appropriate attire policy, he would have voted against it.
Sipping martinis and eating chicken wings at a place called Strip, Phillip Hudson, 21, doesn’t hold back his feelings about what it means to be different at Morehouse. Although he is not considered a member of the Plastics, they were the first group to befriend him on campus, and they remain close. “We have to deal with a serious double standard,” says Phillip, his booming voice turning heads as he states his piece. “The dress code also says no sagging pants, but they don’t enforce that,” he snaps. “It says no head rags, and they don’t enforce that either.” (“We attempt to enforce all elements of the policy in an equitable manner,” Dr. Bynum said via e-mail.)
Phillip tosses his full-bodied curly mane across his shoulders. While Rome insists that Morehouse needs to focus on equality for all in the gay community, Phillip believes that this attitude doesn’t apply to gender benders like the Plastics. “I’ve had professors tell me, ‘Pull that hair back into a ponytail,’ when I walk into class,” says Phillip, rolling his eyes. “But there’s niggas in class with hats on. What is that?”
Built like an NFL linebacker, the 6’4” freshman politely turned down the Morehouse head football coach’s invite for a tryout soon after he arrived on campus. Phillip—who hails from Fort Lauderdale, Fla.—came to Morehouse in hopes of pleasing his father, a minister from Jamaica who he says is staunchly homophobic. “I’ve always wanted to be a man’s man,” says Phillip, with a sigh. “I wanted to be masculine. I thought by coming here to Morehouse I could be the masculine man my father wanted me to be. The first day I got to campus, I was a boy. I had my little dreads pulled back, jeans and all that. Trying to be this masculine boy, real cool and real quiet.”
It took exactly one day on campus for Phillip to see that this plan was not going to work. “The first time I walked from my dorm to student services, someone yelled out ‘faggot’ and a crew of boys started laughing at me.” Phillip throws his hands up dramatically. “That was it. I was going to have to be me. There was no hiding that I was not masculine. That I was not a boy. I went back to taking my female hormones and rocking my hair.”
Phillip tells terrifying stories of being beaten “like a man” throughout childhood for his feminine demeanor. And he says that as a preteen he was raped after being slipped a Mickey in his drink.
Leaving home immediately after high school, he moved to New York City, where he found a roommate in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, on Craigslist. For a while, he was on the streets, and he says he worked for an escort service for a few months. “Not sex,” he insists. “Just dating.”
Phillip admits that he’s felt suicidal over the things he’s experienced in his life, both past and present. “Two weeks ago, I bought a bottle of Everclear and thought about driving on Route 75 until I found a cliff to go over. But I thought about Michael and Bri and Diamond and how much we depend on each other, and I couldn’t do that.”
Still, the differences between his own life and that of his fellow Plastics is glaring. “When Michael and Brian go home to their parents, they are who they are. They bring their boyfriends home for visits. Me? I go home and have to remember to not wear any makeup, take out my hair, put on a do-rag, take off the nail polish and be a boy. It’s what makes it hard to focus on school here.”
After two years at Morehouse, Phillip will be leaving this summer to attend the University of South Florida in Tampa. “I just can’t deal with it anymore,” he says with a heavy sigh. “I’m transferring to a school with over 20,000 students, compared to Morehouse, which just has a few thousand. No one will be thinking about me. I’ll be able to walk into a room—a big man with big hair and big sunglasses and a big tote—and I bet no one will call me faggot. They’ll stare. But I’m used to that. I’ll wear my Ugg boots and my skinny jeans and T-shirts and focus on class.”
Of course the Plastics are only a part of Morehouse’s openly gay community. What about those men who don’t wear heels and makeup?
Gathered in a two-bedroom, off-campus apartment are several members of Safe Space, an organization dedicated to supporting the gay community at Morehouse, whether or not the flout the appropriate attire policy.
Michael J. Brewer, 24, is a 2009 graduate of Morehouse who currently works in the office of Georgia State Representative Alisha Thomas Morgan. The former president of Safe Space, he still serves in an advisory capacity. There’s not a swishy bone in Brewer’s body. If he doesn’t tell you he’s gay, you wouldn’t know. In his off-campus apartment, he’s joined by Kevin Webb and Daniel Edwards, the current co-presidents of Safe Space. “In any culture, there will be divisions,” explains Brewer, choosing his words with care as he describes attitudes toward the Plastics. “Yes, there is some dissonance against the more eccentric, ostentatious and flamboyant members of the gay community.”
Kevin chimes in. “In some ways, it’s like it’s okay to be gay. But not that gay. Or it’s okay to be queer. But not that queer,” he says. “There is homophobia even within the gay community—which is something we have to deal with if Morehouse is going to progress.”
Brewer insists that Morehouse’s future hinges on its ability to deal with students like the Plastics and finding a place for them. “My hope is that Morehouse can step into the space of the most progressive colleges in the nation. Morehouse can be a beacon of light. Morehouse can find a place for the LGBT community. Even the ones transitioning to the opposite gender,” says Brewer. “If a student comes to Morehouse as a man and plans to transition to a woman, yes, there should still be a space for that student. It may sound radical. But that’s what Morehouse has always stood for—radical change in the face of injustice.”
But Brian “Bri” Alston has his doubts about whether Morehouse will ever achieve that level of enlightenment. “We know our lives aren’t really reflective of the Morehouse gay black experience,” says Brian. “And Morehouse has enough issues dealing with just the gay community. They don’t know what to do with us.”
Brewer thinks there’s a chance. “There’s a motto at Morehouse,” he says. “It says above her son’s head Morehouse holds a crown which she challenges her students to grow tall enough to wear. As long as a person is holding to that ideal, it shouldn’t matter how they identify.” It remains to be seen whether that coronation might one day include a tiara.
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By Alexandra Tilsley
Amanda Stevens came out to her classmates before she knew any of their names. And it wasn’t intentional.
At her orientation at the State University of New York at Albany, incoming students were told to divide by gender. Ms. Stevens, a transgender woman who identifies as female but is physically male, chose to go with the females. But in the middle of the session, one of the presenters turned to her and asked if she had made a mistake.
“Eventually, I had to out myself,” Ms. Stevens says. “It was kind of embarrassing because, to this day, people in my class who I won’t have remembered will say, ‘Oh, you were in my orientation.’”
For many universities, accommodating transgender students is the next big challenge in becoming truly inclusive. As information about gender expression becomes more readily available, the number of people identifying as transgender at an early age has grown and, increasingly, students go to college already openly transgender. “The climate is changing,” says Genny Beemyn, director of the Stonewall Center at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an expert on transgender issues.
Already almost 300 colleges have updated their nondiscrimination policies to include gender identity and expression, and more than 50 campuses have gender-neutral housing. But movement is still slow and scattered—often colleges wait until a student speaks out before discussing the issue—and even those that are ahead of the curve still haven’t found all the answers.
“I don’t think anyone has it all covered,” Genny Beemyn says. “Every institution has a ways to go in terms of providing support and services, though there are definitely some colleges that have been at the forefront.”
At the U. of Vermont, Keith Williams, the registrar, helped develop a student-information system that can track transgender students’ preferred names.
Albany eventually stopped separating students by gender at orientation after Ms. Stevens brought the issue to administrators’ attention. But Ms. Stevens and other transgender students still have to request special accommodations in the dormitories, and they still have to e-mail professors individually to request that they use the students’ preferred names and pronouns.
The University of Vermont is one of the only colleges that has found an elegant way for students to share their preferred names and pronouns with professors. The university created a software patch for its student-information system that puts students’ preferred names and pronouns on class rosters and identification cards but retains their legal names on financial-aid and medical forms. Previously, students who wanted to be called by names different from their legal ones had to approach the registrar or their professors and explain. Essentially, they were forced to out themselves as transgender.
Vermont began discussing the change in 2003, after a student wrote a thesis on ways the university could become more transgender-friendly and specifically cited the student-information system. The proposal remained low on the priority list, however, until faculty members began voicing concerns, embarrassed when they accidentally called a transgender student by the wrong name.
It took six months and more than $80,000 in staff time to create the patch, but Keith P. Williams, the university registrar, says the investment was worth it. Already more than 700 students have taken advantage of the new capability. Though most just use it to list a nickname, such as “Bob” instead of “Robert,” Mr. Williams says he knows of at least seven cases where the system was used by a transgender student.
“The customer-service aspect of this is immense,” says Dot V. Brauer, director of Vermont’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning and Ally Services.
Mr. Williams is now working to make the software code available to other colleges that use the same software, SunGard’s Banner system. He has spoken with SunGard about standardizing the preferred-name option, and is looking into distributing his code to interested colleges at no charge.
Vermont is now considering gender-neutral housing as well, a common first step for colleges trying to become more transgender-inclusive. In the past year, 18 institutions, including Connecticut College and Northeastern University, have passed or effected gender-neutral housing policies, according to the National Student Genderblind Campaign.
“There’s only housing for men and women, and for a transgender person that can be a very uncomfortable experience, having to live with someone they don’t identify with,” says Emilia Dunham, a graduate of Northeastern who helped establish gender-neutral housing there.
When she arrived at Northeastern, Ms. Dunham says, the university would allow students to live with someone of the other sex only if they had had reassignment surgery. She began working with student leaders to construct a proposal that would allow men and women to live together, hoping to make housing more comfortable for transgender students and gay students.
The issue had been brought up before, Ms. Dunham says, but never made it as far as a formal proposal. Administrators ultimately approved the plan, and students can now choose to live with someone of the opposite gender through the normal room-selection process. (First-year students, however, must contact the housing office to request gender-neutral housing.)
Gender-neutral housing policies vary by college. Some designate a specific hallway or wing, while others integrate gender-neutral rooms throughout their dorms. Most offer the option only to upperclassmen, because of the difficulties of pairing students of different genders who do not know one another. Some, including Connecticut College, will reassign first-year students to gender-neutral rooms after they have had a chance to meet their classmates and find new roommates.
In devising gender-neutral housing policies, most colleges consider both transgender students and those who simply want to live with a friend of the opposite sex. Occasionally such proposals face resistance from administrators, parents, or students who are concerned about couples living together, but once people understand the impetus for gender-neutral housing, they tend to favor the idea.
“For some people, it was a new concept,” says Amy P. Gauthier, director of Residential Education and Living at Connecticut College. “Once we had more conversations about it, people became more open to it.”
That’s not to say that every proposed transgender-inclusive policy is readily accepted.
Ixchel Rosal, director of the Gender and Sexuality Center at the University of Texas at Austin, says the center has faced some resistance, mostly from hesitant parents and administrators, as it pushes for transgender-inclusive policies. The university only recently added gender identity to its nondiscrimination clause, and it is looking into gender-neutral bathrooms and housing.
“We’re a public institution, so how do you create these public spaces that are welcoming and accommodating to all without anyone feeling their perspective and their values are not being honored?,” Ms. Rosal asks. “When values clash, that becomes an obstacle.”
Questions of values can also arise at single-sex colleges, which face special challenges in areas like student life and admissions as they grapple with how to be inclusive while remaining dedicated to their core missions.
At other colleges, money is the issue. Some have balked at the cost of changing a student-information system or adding sex transitions to their student health-care coverage.
But one of the biggest obstacles for colleges is that they are entering uncharted territory.
Until 10 years ago, Genny Beemyn notes, no one had discussed the idea of gender-neutral housing. Gender-neutral bathrooms were similarly rare, and colleges were just beginning to integrate sexual orientation into their nondiscrimination policies, never mind gender identity.
There are still a number of unknowns; specifically, administrators and students alike have been wrestling with how to make both Greek organizations and athletics—two traditionally sex-divided activities—welcoming to transgender students.
Shane L. Windmeyer, director of Campus Pride, an online resource for LGBT students, contends that membership in a fraternity or sorority should be based on a feeling of shared brotherhood or sisterhood.
“It is about the individual member buying into wanting to be a brother or wanting to be a sister,” Mr. Windmeyer says. “It’s not about the biological sex of the person wanting to be a brother or a sister.”
But he says that few of the national fraternity and sorority organizations have taken up the issue, and that some transgender students avoid fraternities and sororities because they perpetuate the gender binary.
There are no real conclusions about how to accommodate transgender students in athletics, either. The NCAA requires that students compete based on their legal gender, usually determined by their sex. But when a female begins transitioning into a male, she often ends up excluded because she has to take hormones that can be considered illegal drugs under NCAA rules.
But for many colleges, discussions about Greek life or athletics remain a ways down the road.
At Albany, for instance, the top priorities remain adding gender-neutral bathrooms and updating the university’s nondiscrimination clause. Plans could change, of course, and the university intends to continue responding to students’ concerns—just as it did with its orientation.
“I don’t think I ever would have thought about that, except a transgender student said, ‘That was an uncomfortable situation for me to be in,’” says Christine A. Bouchard, vice president for student success. “It just makes it so much more of an educational process for all of us to hear from these students.”
Published in the Chronicles of Higher Education, June 27, 2010. http://chronicle.com/article/Colleges-Rewrite-Rules-to/66046/
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By the CNN Wire Staff
July 12, 2010 7:39 a.m. EDT
(CNN) — A University of Texas at Austin student dormitory named after a man prominent in the Ku Klux Klan in the 1800s may soon have its name changed, university officials said.
University President William Powers Jr. will ask the university system’s board of regents to rename Simkins Residence Hall, following a recommendation by a 21-member advisory group, according to a press release from the university.
Gregory Vincent, the university’s vice president of diversity and community engagement, told CNN affiliate KXAN that naming a public building after a self-proclaimed racist compromised the university’s image.
“We’re certainly not erasing Professor Simkins from the annals of UT history,” said Vincent. “All we are saying is that honorific is a very special designation and it should not harm the university’s reputation.”
If approved by board members, the building will be renamed Creekside Dormitory, for a creek that runs nearby, university officials said.
According to the university, the hall — built in the 1950s to house male law students and graduate students — was named for William Stewart Simkins, who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Simkins taught at the university’s law school from 1899 until his death in 1929.
The controversy over the dorm name came after a former UT law professor Tom Russell initiated research on Simkins.
Published early this year, Russell’s research article claimed that UT officials named the dorm in the 1950s after a Klan member as another way to intimidate African-Americans after the U.S. Supreme Court decision, Brown vs. Board of Education.
“Professor Simkins helped to organize the Ku Klux Klan in Florida at the conclusion of the American Civil War, and he advocated his Klan past to Texas students,” said Russell, now teaching at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law.
“During the 1950s, the memory and history of Professor Simkins supported the university’s resistance to integration. As the university faced pressure to admit African-American students, the university’s faculty council voted to name a dormitory after the Klansman and law professor,” Russell wrote.
“During this time period, alumni also presented the law school with a portrait of Professor Simkins. Portraits and a bust of Professor Simkins occupied prominent positions within the law school through the 1990s,” he said.
KXAN interviewed a handful of students who expressed differing views on the name change.
Jillian Underwood, a UT senior, told KXAN that the name swap could create more controversy.
“There are Confederate names on buildings here, so are we going to draw the line on the KKK, or are we going to take it all the way and get rid of everything? That would significantly change the campus,” she said.
Benjamin Bamgbade, also a senior, said that the university should review more building names and make further changes.
“You don’t want to make a group of people uncomfortable coming to this university,” he said.
CNN’s Helena de Moura contributed to this report.
http://cnn.com/video/?/video/us/2010/07/12/vo.tx.kkk.dorm.kxan
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Call of Diversity & Social Justice Program Flyers
Are you involved in Diversity & Social Justice programming on your campus? Have you participated in a Diversity program on your campus? If the answer is YES, the Diversity & Social Justice Commission is in need of your help. The Diversity & Social Justice Commission is asking all WCPA members in collecting diversity program flyers, both past, present and future programming. The intent is to have a table of diversity program flyers where WCPA members can browse, inquire and be inspired by other programs happening on other campuses.
If you can help and bring diversity & social justice program flyers and other materials, please do so! If you have any questions, please email me and let me know at lom@uwgb.edu – See you in October!
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