Saturday, July 3, 2010

New Policies Accommodate Transgender Students


The Chronicle of Higher Education

June 27, 2010

Yana Paskova for The Chronicle

Amanda Stevens, a transgender student at the State U. of New York at Albany, poses for a portrait in Long Island. She says a gender-segregated orientation at Albany forced her to out herself to other students.

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.'"


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