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Thursday, May 19, 2016
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
OPINION

LARA MOEHLMAN

EDITOR IN CHIEF

JEREMY KAPLAN

EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

BRADLEY WHIPPLE

MANAGING EDITOR

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at 

the University of Michigan since 1890.

A more inclusive education

Invest in friends

FROM THE DAILY

In response to the Board of 

Education’s guidelines, Michigan 
state Sen. Tom Casperson (R–
Escanaba) announced his plans for 
a bill that requires students to use 
bathrooms and locker rooms that 
correspond with their “birth” sex. 
If the student has written consent 
from a parent or guardian, he or 
she may use an alternative single-
occupancy restroom or a staff 
member’s bathroom, according 
to Casperson’s proposed bill. This 
has stunted the progress to get 
the State Board of Education’s 
protective 
and 
inclusive 

guidelines 
for 
transgender 

students formalized, even after 
a public comment period ended 
last week. Such a maneuver is an 
obstacle to Michigan’s inclusivity, 
and we stand opposed to all 
actions taken to obstruct these 
inclusive guidelines’ approval.

While the nation may currently 

be obsessed with a debate over 
restrooms, 
these 
guidelines 

barely discuss them. Most of 
the 
document 
is 
dedicated 

to 
suggestions 
for 
improving 

transgender inclusivity through 

recommendations 
concerning 

names, pronouns, sports and 
dress codes in Michigan public 
schools. Near the end, in a small 
section titled “Restrooms,” the 
State Board of Education provides 
two 
alternative 
options 
for 

resolving the “bathroom” conflict. 
The 
guidelines 
essentially 

state that, in an ideal scenario, 
students should be allowed to use 
a restroom that corresponds to 
their gender identity — regardless 
of whether or not it corresponds 
with 
what’s 
on 
their 
birth 

certificate —, and, if the student 
requests, they can gain access to 
a gender neutral restroom or staff 
member’s restroom. 

The 
paragraph 
for 
“Locker 

Rooms or Changing Facilities,” 
however, does not recommend for 
full inclusivity in locker rooms. 
Instead, the guidelines recommend 
the 
student 
use 
an 
adjusted 

changing schedule or a private area 
(in the facility or nearby). These 
kinds of alternatives may result 
in the student feeling stigmatized 
and 
excluded. 
Such 
was 
the 

case in Illinois, where the U.S. 

Department of Education’s Office 
of Civil Rights ruled that Chicago’s 
Township High School District 
211 violated a a transgender teen’s 
rights in requiring her to use a 
separate designated area instead of 
the girls’ locker room.

Beyond 
 
the 
isolation 
of 

transgender students is another 
problematic aspect of the State 
Board of Education’s guidelines: 
the recommendation of discretion 
in locker room usage “determined 
on 
a 
case-by-case 
basis.” 

Claiming that these decisions on 
inclusivity are subject to a case-
by-case discretion gives cover for 
discriminatory, bigoted policy that 
doesn’t have the interest of affected 
students at heart.

Furthermore, while the current 

political environment may be toxic 
to radical change, we hope that one 
day the state will turn the State 
Board of Education’s proposed 
guidelines 
for 
transgender 

inclusivity into truly enforceable 
action. Only then will we have a 
positive learning environment for 
all LGBTQ students of all ages in 
our state. 

Two months ago, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed a bill banning 
transgender individuals from using public bathrooms that don’t match 
the sex on their birth certificates. The bill resulted in numerous protests 
and lawsuits. Even before this discussion re-entered the national 
discourse, the Michigan State Board of Education was considering 
providing schools with formal but non-binding guidelines for a safe 
and supportive learning environment for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, 
Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) students. These guidelines 
suggest that schools allow students to choose their own gender, name, 
pronouns and bathrooms without the input of parents, doctors or the 
school. The Board of Education’s guidelines call for equal treatment 
for transgender students while suggesting that only the student can 
determine their gender identity.

O

ut of all of the pressures 
placed on us in college, the 
pressure to have a broad 

social circle and 
loyal 
friends 

may be the most 
confusing. The 
pressure to get a 
good grade can be solved by studying, 
the pressure to feel involved can be 
solved by joining organizations on 
campus, but the pressure to make 
deep and meaningful connections 
with other people doesn’t have 
an easy solution. Social media, 
where people often flaunt their 
friendships by posting group photos 
and commenting on each other’s 
statuses, only works to exacerbate 
this pressure. In some cases, people 
can put their time and effort into an 
organization on campus and thus 
make friends, but it doesn’t always 
work out this way for everyone. We 
are constantly surrounded by people 
our own age, with similar interests 
and similar schedules — so why is 
it so hard for some of us to make 
friends and form a social group?

In high school, friendships were 

easier to make and sustain. For the 
most part, we saw the same people 
multiple times each day, and due to 
high school’s rigid social structure, 
it was fairly easy to tell whom our 
circle of friends were. At least this 
was how it worked in my case 
— I attended a school where my 
graduating class was 90 people, most 
of whom I had known since middle 
school. I remember that before 
coming to college, a lot of authority 
figures told me that at a university, I 
could decide whom my “real” friends 
were, that they would no longer be 
based on convenience. And for the 
most part this has been true; I have 
been able to make a lot of new friends 
at the University of Michigan, the 
foundations of these friendships 
based on more than accessibility. So, 
in my experience, meeting potential 
friends hasn’t been the issue here at 
the University, it has been finding 
ways to sustain these friendships.

Let me tell you a little bit more 

about myself. I had a very close friend 
throughout childhood whom I had a 
falling-out with, and I believe that the 
source of this falling-out was because 
one of us decided to switch schools 
and neither of us were very good at 
keeping up with communication. 
Recently, I tried to reconnect, but 
she essentially told me that she 
wasn’t interested in any chance at 
reconciliation. After hearing this, I 
felt I was incapable of maintaining 
a friendship. This was especially 

daunting to realize as I am planning 
to spend the next full academic year 
abroad in China. I was worried that 
the friendships that I had made at 
college would go the same way as 
my childhood friendships — that we 
would stop talking and that the end 
of our friendships would be clouded 
in confusion and anger. I desperately 
wanted to keep these friendships — 
friendships that, though not based on 
convenience, are easily maintained 
because we all live in the same city 
and have similar schedules. I wasn’t 
sure how I was going to keep this 
interaction up while I was thousands 
of miles away and in a different time 
zone.

I’m still figuring it out. I haven’t 

left for China yet, so I still have time 
to come up with a plan of action 
for how I am going to sustain my 
friendships. But recently I’ve found 
that trying harder is a good place to 
start. The friends that I have that 
don’t live in my dorm, I’ve tried to 
learn their schedules and invite them 
to hang out more. I try to leave the 
comfort of my dorm more often so 
that I can visit my friends who don’t 
live in the same building as me. I try 
to be the first to initiate contact with 
somebody whom I think I could 
become friends with — something I 
never did in high school. I’ve started 
to value myself as a friend — I try 
to see myself as a person that other 
people would want to be associated 
with, 
which 
makes 
me 
more 

confident when trying to establish 
connections. And, most importantly, 
I’ve decided to focus mainly on my 
individual friendships and not on the 
group dynamic. It can be exhausting 
making sure that all of your friends 
are also friends with each other and 
ensuring that your circle of friends is 
in good shape.

When it comes down to it, I’ve 

found that perfect friendships aren’t 
really something that exist. Though 
it may seem that everybody around 
you has the perfect squad, I bet that 
upon closer inspection, things aren’t 
as impeccable as you would think. I 
think that the most important part of 
making good friends in college is to 
take care of yourself — get rid of the 
friends that drain you, and hold on to 
the friends that lift you up. As we all 
have learned by now, there is no part 
of our lives that will ever be perfect — 
so why should we expect our friend 
groups to be perfect? All we can do 
is protect ourselves and be kind to 
those who have been kind to us.

—Elena Hubbell can be reached 

at elepearl@umich.edu.

ELENA
HUBBELL

Roland Davidson, Caitlin Heenan, Jeremy Kaplan, 
Madeline Nowicki, Kevin Sweitzer, Brooke White.

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