Suggested Best Practices for Supporting Trans* Students 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

June 15, 2014

Contact: jen self, Publications & Communication Chair, [email protected]

The Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals’ Trans* Policy Working Group, in consultation with national student affairs associations, developed best practice recommendations to assist colleges and universities in providing services and support to trans* students. In February 2014, the Consortium charged Dr. Genny Beemyn, chair of the appointed eight person, multi-regional working group to devise trans* policies and practices. Building upon work with AACRAO (the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers) the Trans* Policy Working Group analyzed and developed suggested best practices in eight areas, campus records and documents, housing, recreational sports and locker rooms, campus facilities, sororities and fraternities, Deans of Students/Campus Conduct Offices, campus health centers, and campus counseling centers. 

While schools will vary in the resources they can offer and their ability to implement the recommendations, the practices set a bar of competency for which institutions should strive in addressing the needs of trans* students—students whose gender identity and/or expression challenges binary notions of “male” and “female.”  The Consortium recommends that relevant national associations adopt these policies and practices.

The Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at USC Upstate

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 21, 2014

Contact: Jen Self, Publications & Communication Chair, [email protected]

The Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals believes in the value of gender/sexuality studies and we support the professionals who do this work. Gender/Sexuality Studies programs and centers have historically been difficult to establish in many parts of the U.S., particularly in the Southeast. As such, we find it both appropriate and courageous that the Center for Women and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina (USC), Upstate has made a 16-year, consistent commitment to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans educational initiatives among its many programs related to gender and women’s lives.

Last week, on May 12, 2014, Interim Senior Vice Chancellor John Masterson explained that as part of budget cuts, the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at USC Upstate will be closed starting July 1, 2014. According to their website, The Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at USC Upstate serves students, faculty, staff, and community members through academic courses and co-curricular programming. Co-curricular programming encourages students to become more engaged in their studies. Often students come to gender and sexuality centers to process how their academic studies affect their personal lives. This point is driven home by the CWGS herstory web page image of a young woman holding up a sign saying, “I need feminism because it allows me to have a voice that society does not want me to have.”

Title IX protects trans* students

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 30, 2014

Contact: justin adkins, Publications & Communication Chair, [email protected]

The Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals applauds the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) of the Department of Education on its recent clarification of Title IX provisions to clearly include and enumerate claims of discrimination based on gender identity, gender expression (GIGE), and non-binary expressions of gender.

This Title IX guidance came as a part of a larger set of clarifications of Title IX implications regarding campus’ responses to sexual violence. Alongside clarifying the reach of Title IX protections to include gender identity and expression, the supplemental document unequivocally affirms the obligations of educational institutions regarding responses to harassment and violence based on perceived sexual orientation and gender identity/ expression.  It also acknowledges the disproportionate effects of harassment and violence on LGBT students.

Count Us!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 24, 2014

Contact: justin adkins, Publications & Communication Chair, [email protected]

The Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals is proud to announce that we signed onto a letter with 39 other organizations calling for the National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic, and Other Populations (NAC) to address the critical importance of including the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community in data collection efforts.  You can read that letter below.