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Boston Globe Holds up Transgender Students as Agents of Social Change

Boston Globe Holds up Transgender Students as Agents of Social Change

“part of a growing coalition”

This Boston Globe article by Laura Krantz is more than pro-trans. It’s like a love letter.

Take a look:

Transgender students push change on college campuses

At first, Jake Hammel was relieved when his Lesley University art history professor let students introduce themselves on the first day of class, rather than calling the roll. But then she stopped him, and asked why his name didn’t match the one on her roster.

The reason: Hammel is transgender, and goes by a different name — and gender — than he was assigned at birth. But the school requires his original, female name to be listed on the class roster.

“I think that transgender issues are something that Lesley doesn’t want to deal with yet, and I’m a little confused to why,” Hammel said.

Transgender men and women are the latest group of students to cause a wave of social change on college campuses nationwide. Many feel discriminated against on issues as basic as where they may live, what name they are called, and where they feel comfortable using the bathroom, and they’ve begun asking college administrators to make fundamental shifts in campus policies.

Some schools seem to have made adjustments without much fanfare. The student insurance plans at 86 schools nationwide, including Harvard, Northeastern, and Tufts, cover hormones and gender-reassignment surgeries for students. But students at other schools, such as Lesley, feel they must constantly crusade to be treated fairly.

Hammel is part of a growing coalition of transgender students at the Cambridge art and teaching college who say they have felt stymied by the administration when they have asked to use a name other than the one on their birth certificate, on their student ID or e-mail address, and on official class rosters, so teachers will know what to call them.

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Comments

At my local university, they have entitled the collection of grievance studies as the “school of social transformation.” They didn’t ask anybody for the legitimacy to transform society, they just arrogated themselves that power.

so teachers will know what to call them.

Oh, I’ll bet they know what to call them, all right.

They’re just too polite to do it.