Wednesday, January 18th, 2017 // The Statement
4B
Wednesday, January 18th, 2017 // The Statement 
 
5B

Navigating New Policies 
and Old Prejudices

L

SA junior Emily Kaufman jokingly refers to 
herself as a “trans-mama,” a guide of sorts to other 
women at the University who are navigating what 

it means to be a transgender woman on campus.

“When I first came to this University I knew I was a 

woman but I didn’t look like a woman,” Kaufman said. “I 
started transitioning between the fall of ‘14 and winter ’15 
my freshman year. There was only one other trans girl I 
knew about in the entire undergraduate class early on.”

In October 2016, Kaufman gained national attention 

when Cosmopolitan magazine published a profile of her 
 

decision to rush a sorority on campus, under the headline 
“Can Trans Girls Be Sorority Girls?”

Candid and witty during our interview at the State 

Street Espresso Royale, she describes the growth of the 
population of trans women on campus as slow but gradual.

“A few more came in. A few more came out,” Kaufman 

said. 

Gender identity refers to an individual’s internal self-

perceived gender — this self-identification could be male 
or female, but also may fall outside the conventional 
binary. The manner in which people externally present 
their gender — commonly through appearance, dress and 
behavior — is referred to as gender expression.

Those who are born with a biological sex that matches 

their gender identity and expression are categorized 
as cisgender, while transgender generally describes 
those whose biological sex, gender identity and gender 
expression do not align. An estimated 0.6 percent of the 
U.S. adult population identifies as transgender, according 
to a UCLA Law School study.

Her freshman year, Kaufman lived in the Gender 

Inclusive Living Environment, housed in East Quad 
and established in 2013. The housing community 
supports students who identify as transgender or gender-
nonconforming.

In her first semesters on campus, professors would 

frequently mis-identify her as a male — unaware of her 
gender transition — which Kaufman accepted with an air 

of inevitability.

“That’s sort of the way it goes,” she said. “Unless you’re 

blessed with a feminine heart-shaped face and bombed 
with makeup.”

As an active member of the campus LGBTQ community, 

Kaufman hopes to educate peers and faculty on how to 
better understand transgender identity and avoid the 
misunderstandings she finds prevalent on campus.

“The biggest problems that I’ve had at this University 

are with professors... they are for the most part ignorant on 
trans issues,” Kaufman said, citing an incident in which one 
of her professors referred to Caitlin Jenner as transsexual, 
an outdated term many people find overly clinical. “It’s 
not okay that they are teaching people who maybe aren’t 
experienced with trans stuff false information. I am not 
cool with that.”

However, Kaufman acknowledged many many of these 

misunderstandings result not from malice, but a lack of 
information.

 “Expecting everyone to have this knowledge is 

problematic,” Kaufman said. “They don’t have access to 
this knowledge, they don’t know. There’s some things 
you’re not going to find on Google. There are some things 
you can only learn from another trans person.”

For instance, someone may not realize that asking a 

trans person for his or her pre-transition name can be 
offensive and hurtful, she said.

***

On October 5, 2016 University President Mark Schlissel 

announced the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiative, 
aimed at promoting an inclusive and diverse campus 
environment through the implementation of individual 
strategic plans within each of the University’s 19 schools 
and colleges, administrative units, athletics and the health 
system.

Recently, the University’s administration has taken 

steps to assist transgender students amid the rollout of the 

campus-wide Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Plan.

For instance, a newly implemented preferred pronoun 

policy — adopted in October 2016 — allows students to 
choose the pronouns they self-identify with on Wolverine 
Access to avoid misidentification by professors. 

The policy was met with some backlash from some 

segments of the University community. LSA junior Grant 
Strobl, chair of the conservative student group Young 
Americans for Freedom, drew national attention when 
he changed his pronouns on Wolverine Access to “His 
Majesty,” mocking the new policy.

The Spectrum Center, located in the Michigan Union, is 

a resource for members of the LGBTQ campus community. 
Founded in 1970, the center was the first of its kind at an 
American college, and worked to promote policy that would 
bar University discrimination against students based on 
sexual orientation. In 1995, the Center expanded to provide 
resources for transgender students and professionals on 
campus, and it’s since fought to educate and activate the 
University community to promote inclusion and support 
for LBGTQ students. 

Will Sherry, director of the Spectrum Center, said the 

center functions not only to promote and pursue policy 
change, but also to ensure these practices remain in place 
beyond their initial implementation.

The Spectrum Center makes space for LGBTQ student 

leadership, employing students part-time to serve in 
various education and advocacy capacities. The center’s 
student advocacy board — which Kaufman sits on — 
provides training and workshops on inclusivity to different 
student organizations and departments.

“One of the biggest obstacles is always just education, 

lack of information, getting information out to people in 
a way that they can grapple with that if that is something 
that is new for them and that is a big goal of our center,” 
Sherry said. “I don’t think that should be on every person 
who holds that identity (to educate others), and so it’s really 
important to have structures like our center in place.”

Sherry stressed that the most important role of the center 

Transgender 
on Campus:

b y M a r i a R o b i n s -S o m e r v i l l e, D a i l y A r t s W r i t e r

is not simply to introduce new rules — like the preferred 
pronoun policy — but also to fundamentally shift how the 
campus community approaches gender and sexuality.

“(The preferred pronoun policy) was a system, a tool that 

was put into place this semester...it feels new, in that way, 
but the practice is something that we would have expected 
of people before the system was in place,” Sherry said. “I 
have talked to many students who have greatly benefitted 
from being able to assert who they are without having 
multiple conversations and have had their gender respected 
in the classroom in ways that felt really good for them.”

***

Kinesiology senior Laima Augustaitus said they 

experienced insensitive comments, jokes and dismissive 
language 
from 
professors 
regarding 
their 
gender 

identification, an issue they attribute in part to a lack of 
diversity and dialogue within STEM fields.

They attribute the alienation not as the fault of any 

organization or individual, but of a systemic lack of dialogue 
on gender identity.

There’s ageism there too, Augustaitus suggested: 

“Sometimes people say, my professor’s old, they won’t get 
it.”.

Augustaitis’s academic department is small, which they 

said limits their anonymity.

“I feel like if I do say something I am automatically 

outed to the whole department and it would just get really 
uncomfortable,” Augustaitis said. “If I started insisting 
in my program of 12 people that they use my pronouns, it 
would be followed with: ‘what is that?”

Augustaitus 
additionally 
addressed 
feelings 
of 

isolation they face as a transgender person in a same-sex 
relationship. They described their gender identity as subtle, 
and therefore something that is often overlooked and coped 
with internally.

“I’ve felt sometimes like I can’t go to a meeting for other 

trans or non-binary students because I look the way I do, 
like I shouldn’t be allowed to get upset when my pronouns 
are misused,” Augustaitis said. “I’m sure other people feel 
this way too.”

Overall, they expressed disappointment with the 

University’s resources for transgender students, saying 
they would have liked to have had access to more LBGTQ 
resources and support organizations earlier in their 
academic career. Augustaitis was also skeptical of the 
University’s DEI initiative, suggesting the efforts are more 
cosmetic than substantive, “using people’s identities to 
have them speak and do all this emotional labor, but for 
what?”

However, Augustaitis has found a place beyond campus. 

As a member of the Inter-Cooperative-Council, they found 
an educational community they were comfortable in.

“(ICC) has provided not only resources, but people I 

could engage in conversation with about identity without 
seeming like I was complaining or something that was only 
relevant to me,” they said.

Reena Pang is an LSA Junior in the Residential College 

who came out as trans last year. Living in East Quad has 
provided her with a supportive and open environment, she 
says. Being said, there are still challenges to being a trans 
woman at the University.

Systems in place at the University to accommodate trans 

people, such as gender-inclusive bathrooms and resources 
available through the Spectrum Center and CAPS, were 
also reassuring to her.

Even with the new pronoun policy, Pang said professors 

have misidentified her gender twice already.

“There’s just a feeling of mild anxiety when people 

misgender you, especially when professors are doing 
it,” Reena said, harkening back to the mentions of a 
certain discomfort and power dynamic by Kaufman and 
Augustaitus.

She also discussed the infrastructures in place for helping 

students transition.

 “The University is actually putting out a system through 

UHS where people can actually start hormones because 
they are training and bringing in endocrinologists to 
basically start hormone replacement therapy for people 
who need it,” Pang said.

However, there is only one endocrinologist currently 

at the University Health System, with a long waiting list. 
Additionally UHS is provide blood tests and continuing 
hormones, but not necessarily start the hormone 
replacement therapy. As Will Sherry of the Spectrum 
Center mentioned as a common theme, the resources are 
often there, but the access to them is in many cases, very 
limited.

“As much as I trust students to be able to understand 

things on their own,” Sherry said. “There is a lot of value 
in being able to explore identities and talk about them in 
a class.”

 In saying this she showed hope at least, for the 

University community to learn and grow, even as policies 
limit access to resources individuals need. 

Photo by Claire Abdo