[News] [MT, USA] More at stake than bathrooms in debate over transgender student rights

[Stephanie Stevens]

Bozeman Daily Chronicle, MT, USA


[5/29/2016]

More at stake than bathrooms in debate over transgender student rights

By Gail Schontzler
Chronicle Staff Writer

[Photo: Cassidy Medicine Horse]

For transgender people in Montana, there’s more at stake in the national debate on transgender students’ rights than which bathroom they use.

For people in Bozeman who are transgender – from university students, to Bozeman High School students and gender non-conforming children as young as 7 – the issue could be a matter of life and death. The debate’s outcome could affect their education, families, treatment as human beings, safety and survival.

It came as a shock to Cassidy Medicine Horse, a transgender woman and advocate working toward her Ph.D. at Montana State University, when the Obama administration announced this month it was taking a strong stand in favor of transgender rights.

The U.S. Justice Department sent letters to U.S. public school districts and colleges declaring that discrimination against transgender students violates Title IX, the law barring discrimination in education on the basis of sex, and failure to follow that interpretation of the law would jeopardize schools’ federal funding.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch gave an impassioned speech telling transgender people, “We see you; we stand with you; and we will do everything we can to protect you going forward. Please know that history is on your side.”

“Oh, my God,” Medicine Horse said when she saw the news break on television. “All the work we’ve done, trying to get recognition of our identity, was suddenly coming true, coming to fruition. I suspected it was very much how the civil rights activists of the 1960s felt when they realized the civil rights amendments would be passed.

“What we’re experiencing right now is a pivotal moment in history that exceeds the bathroom issue.”

Students in Bozeman High’s Sexuality and Gender Alliance club posted an article on their Facebook page calling this the transgender movement’s “I Have a Dream” moment.

Conservatives also felt shocked and saw a lot at stake. Texas and 11 other swiftly sued the federal government over the directive that schools must let transgender students use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity.

The states’ lawsuit called it a conspiracy to turn workplaces and schools “into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process, and running roughshod over commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.”

Jeff Laszloffy, Montana Family Foundation director, warned that the federal action could put “your child in danger” by letting students use the restrooms for the gender with which they self-identify, without requiring physical characteristics of that gender.

“This is insanity!” Laszloffy wrote, adding, “We need only look at the mountain of evidence that sexual predators use transgender laws as an excuse to gain access to women’s facilities.”

Danger is also on the minds of transgender students and their families, who fear bullying, violence and suicide. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth are at increased risk for suicidal thoughts, attempts and suicide, the Centers for Disease Control reports.

Samuel Edelman, who graduated from Bozeman High School last year, fell from the fifth floor of Miller Hall on the University of Montana campus early on Feb. 20. His death was ruled a suicide — and was the second transgender suicide in Missoula that week. He was 18.

“Sam was a beautiful, kind, compassionate, exceptionally smart individual,” his parents, Vickie and Adam Edelman of Bozeman, wrote right after their son’s death. “The untenable challenges associated with being a woman living in a male body led to deep depression for Sam.”

Sam was a snowboarder, taekwondo black belt, “Star Wars” fan, high school jazz band musician, a hunting partner to his dad and an advocate of equality for all, the Missoulian and Kaimin student newspaper reported.

“He was beautiful, he was loved, and he was overcome by the unfathomable reality of being transgender,” his father Adam Edelman wrote last week.

Though Sam’s family, friends and professionals in Bozeman and Missoula gave their unconditional support, Adam wrote, “He was well aware of the ignorance and hate towards the transgender community.

“While it’s too late for Sam, we are pleased to see the beginnings of positive steps to raise awareness and help create protections for the transgender community — especially in our schools.”

Bozeman schools: Making students comfortable

Bozeman High School and MSU had already started working to accommodate transgender students, in response to requests from students and their families — even before the Obama administration’s guidelines were issued.

“We’ve had some youth come to us who identify as transgender,” Bozeman High Principal Kevin Conwell said. “We are trying to be very sensitive to that, trying to work with students and their parents.”

Bozeman High has had both transgender students who identify as male and transgender students who identify as female, Conwell said.

Rob Watson, Bozeman superintendent of schools, said that School Board policy 3210 “guarantees access to equal educational opportunities for all students.”

“In order for students to learn,” Watson said, “they have to feel safe and comfortable.”

A few months ago the high school brought in the group PFLAG, Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, to talk with the staff, Conwell said. “It was very well received.”

Bozeman High’s staff is trying to use the “he” and “she” pronouns that transgender students prefer, which seems pretty important to the students, he said.

When it comes to bathrooms and locker rooms, the guidance letter sent by the U.S. Justice and Education departments says that schools can make alternate accommodations, but transgender students should be allowed to use men’s or women’s bathrooms and locker rooms if they prefer.

Conwell said at Bozeman High, that hasn’t been an issue so far. Transgender students and parents have been more concerned about having safe, private bathrooms and changing rooms.

“We’ve identified two bathrooms,” Conwell said, one in the north wing and one in the south wing, as single-stall, unisex bathrooms that any student can use. New push-button locks were installed and new signs have been ordered. “It seems to be working out well.”

When it comes to high school locker rooms, the principal said, the school has identified private spaces where transgender students can change — for example, in the referees’ changing room.

“It’s a pretty small percentage of students, but it’s starting to come up more,” Conwell said. “We’re trying to live by our policy and make things as safe and open as possible for all parties involved.”

Asked if there has been any bullying of transgender students, Conwell said, “I think by and large most have been very tolerant and respectful. Our counselors are working with students to make them feel comfortable and accepted.”

The Montana High School Association last year briefly considered adopting a new policy, as more than 30 other states have done, for determining whether transgender students can compete as athletes in the gender with which they identify. Mark Beckman, MHSA executive director, said the policy would have created a committee to ensure the gender switch was legitimate, but withdrew the idea because there was “a lot of concern” among most school districts.

Conwell said Bozeman High has already dealt with the issue of transgender athletes and sought guidance from MHSA. The association recommended getting verification from a qualified counselor or professional that a student is legitimately transitioning from one gender to the other.

“It’s definitely new to many of us,” Conwell said. “We’re trying our best to navigate it with everybody’s best interests in mind … to honor students in the process, to work with families … to make sure nothing gets in the way of their education.”

Michele Grabbe, head of the PFLAG chapter in Bozeman, said members of her group were brought in by school administrators to speak with staff at both Bozeman High and at a Bozeman elementary school, where a 7-year-old child was deemed to be gender nonconforming.

“Kids are coming out earlier and earlier,” Grabbe said.

“It’s really exciting,” she said, that school staffs wanted to hear from PFLAG. “I think Montana has a ways to go, but Bozeman has been wonderful. We haven’t encountered anything negative … from either of the trainings we did.”

Grabbe, who was raised in the Southern Baptist church in Odessa, Texas, said she always believed that homosexuality was a choice and a sin. Despite raising her children in the church, her son came out as bisexual at age 17.

“I told him I loved him,” she said, but, “I cried for about two weeks.”

She started researching the topic and founded the PFLAG chapter in Bozeman in 2011. It includes parents, grandparents, gay, lesbian and transgender people.

Sexuality is about who you’re attracted to, she said. Gender is what your brain tells you you are. And sometimes that doesn’t line up with body parts.

When she heard the Obama administration’s announcement, Grabbe said, “I was like, ‘Yes!’

“I think about a kid seeing the president of the United States saying that, feeling affirmed,” she said. “‘You know the president of the United States is sticking up for me?’ That saves lives.”

MSU changing signs of the times

Montana State University has taken several steps to accommodate transgender students, largely in response to activism by LGBTQ people like Medicine Horse, the Associated Students of MSU and the Queer Straight Alliance.

“We feel we’ve made a great deal of progress,” said Tracy Ellig, university spokesman.

QSA wrote a letter in January to MSU President Waded Cruzado, demanding action to make the campus friendlier and safer for people who don’t conform to gender norms.

Its five demands included gender-neutral bathrooms in each building, a gender-neutral locker room, staff use of inclusive language, dorm assignments with accepting roommates, and a new staff position in the Diversity Awareness Office to concentrate on issues for LGBTQ students.

QSA suggested nine single-stall bathrooms that could be converted to gender-neutral. MSU went farther, finding 37 single-stall bathrooms, which will be reassigned by the end of summer, Ellig said. New signs that say “Toilet” are on order and will be posted showing a restroom symbol with no indication of gender.

Finalists are already being interviewed for the LGBTQ staff position, who will be a graduate student working 19 hours a week.

MSU’s dean of students, QSA and others are working on creating a website with guidelines for MSU staff describing best practices and using inclusive language for LGBT students.

However, the request to use transgender students’ preferred name, rather than given name, and preferred sex on official documents is proving more complicated, Ellig said, because it involves large amounts of data, from financial aid to housing, the registrar and health insurance.

“That could take years,” he said.

For fall 2016 roommate assignments, MSU has started letting students know that they can talk confidentially with someone on the housing staff about requesting a roommate who “will be accepting of my specific values or gender identity.”

MSU also has been working for more than a year to create shower facilities to accommodate LGBTQ students, as well as other people, including visiting parents, Ellig said.

Architectural plans call for building two single-occupancy showers and changing rooms and one single-occupancy restroom on the second floor of the Student Fitness Center. Bids will be sought this summer, and MSU hopes to finish the project by December, depending on the construction market.

And earlier this month, the Diversity Awareness Office hosted MSU’s first Lavender Graduation ceremony, to honor graduating LGBT students.

“Montana State was already well along the path to working on the issues identified in the Obama document,” Ellig said. As with many social issues, he said, “It’s unlikely you ever arrive at a final point and say, ‘The job is done.’ Institutions and the nation will continue to work on it, and that will be the case at MSU.”


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