Dallas Community College District Votes to Add Trans Protections
LBGT activists celebrate in Dallas
During their monthly meeting Tuesday, trustees of the Dallas County Community College District voted to amend their nondiscrimination policies to include protections for gender identity and expression.
The Dallas Voice reports that of the three policies amended, two covered students and one protected employees.
At the meeting, five people spoke on behalf of the issue, after which district board chair Jerry Prater said, “We have gotten your message loud and clear.”
The Dallas district is Texas’s third community college to add protections for transgender people.
Read the full article here.
Coming Out Journal: Top 10 LGBT Scholarships
Top College Scholarships for LGBT Students
By Kathy Belge, About.com GuideHere are some of the top national and regional scholarships available to LGBT students. Be sure to check your local gay community organizations or college of choice too, because there are many local LGBT scholarships…
(via qbits)
Source: lesbianlife.about.com
LGBT Rights, Religious Faith at Odds at Some Colleges
The relationship between religion and LGBT rights is becoming an issue at some colleges and universities — at liberal schools, administrators are dealing with concerns about student faith groups that are antigay, while some conservatives are decrying the presence of pro-gay groups on Catholic campuses.
At Tufts University in Medford, Mass., chaplain David O’Leary (pictured) is in discussions with leaders of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, a national evangelical Christian group, and its student chapter at the university, the Tufts Christian Fellowship. Concerns have been raised about the national organization exerting undue influence on the Tufts group and about discriminatory practices of both, reports The Tufts Daily, the university’s student newspaper.
Four students filed a complaint in November with the university judiciary, saying the Tufts Christian Fellowship’s policies conflicted with the university’s nondiscrimination policy, which covers sexual orientation. The Christian group requires “sexual chastity” of members, but that is applied differently to gay and straight members, according to one of the students who lodged the complaint (since withdrawn while awaiting O’Leary’s findings).
Click the link above to read the full article.
Helping LGBT students find a welcoming college
Time to be thinking about your academic future kids!!
Source: app.com
Transgender Medical Needs Go Unaddressed at Most Colleges | advocate.com
Transgender college students across the country say more needs to be done to cover their medical needs under university-provided health care plans, according to Campus Progress.
Most college and university health policies cover some procedures such as chest reduction surgeries and hormonal treatments for non-transgender people, similar treatment is not afforded to transgender students.
Transgender University of Iowa graduate student Stef Shuster paid $10,000 for chest surgery because the school’s health coverage does not consider such procedures to be necessary. The cost of the surgery is nearly equal to Shuster’s annual stipend.
“I can only dream about what else that money could have been spent on,” Shuster told Campus Progress. “I honestly don’t know how I pulled it together in order to pay for that.”
Another transgender student estimated that her full transition cost $49,550, with none of it covered by university insurance.
Currently, 18 colleges cover at least some medical expenses tied to transgender peoples’ needs, at minimal cost to the institutions themselves.
(139 and counting) North American Colleges with gender-neutral housing!
As university application season is in full swing i thought it time to highlight the updated list of colleges with official policies providing gender-neutral housing for students.
Remember, it’s not exhaustive and i rely a lot on tip-offs to keep it as up-to-date and comprehensive as possible. If you know of any schools i’ve missed off, please do let me know. Further, just because a school isn’t listed, it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a no-go if you require special housing provisions. It’s definitely worth talking to the admissions board and the Resident Life people to make your case and see if they can help you out. You never know!
For my UK readers, remember that almost all of the time, at almost all unis, you will have your own room in a hall or flat with either a shared bathroom or your own bathroom for your first year. Roommates are rare, and can usually be avoided if you have exceptional reasons. I’ve gone into more detail about how the UK university housing system tends to work (including at Oxbridge where there are some women-only colleges) at the above link, too.
Source: fuckyeahgenderstudies
"College becomes first to ask students' sexual orientation"
“Increasing diversity is part of our mission statement,” Rold told the Chicago Sun-Times. “This is simply closing the loop, in many ways, of another group who has a very strong identity. It may not be race and religion, but it’s an important part of who they are.”
Source: bencrowther
Colleges with gender-neutral housing
So, college and university application season is about to begin in earnest soon, and I understand that many of my readers will be doing just that—researching and applying to colleges and universities for undergraduate or graduate study.
A big concern for many young students is housing on campus—what dorms will be like, &c. A bigger concern for some students is whether the colleges have in place housing policies designed to be inclusive to their welfare needs—that is, whether the institution has gender-neutral accommodation.
Guess what?
I’ve compiled a list of ‘em.
It is a work in perpetual progress; if you know of any institutions that i’ve left off this list, please let me know and i’ll add them forthwith. I’m particularly keen to expand the list to more schools in Canada, and it would be nice to have at least one college in every US State. This list is not, however, limited to North America. So, if you have anything to add, drop me a line!
Currently have 102 schools in the US and 2 in Canada. It’s not enough….
P.S. California currently leads with 15, followed by New York with 13 and Massachusetts with 10.
Source: fuckyeahgenderstudies
Professor Claims Anti-Straight Bias
A professor at a Catholic college in Buffalo, N.Y., filed a complaint with the state human rights division alleging that a clique of younger gay men discriminated against him because he is straight.
According to ABC News, Csaba Marosan claims that he “endured years of being ostracized by administrators at Trocaire College, a Catholic, two-year school in Buffalo, for not being part of their clique made up largely of younger, gay men dubbed the ‘Merry Men.’”
Marosan, a native Hungarian, also alleged discrimination based on his accent and gender. The New York Human Rights Division has found probable cause that Trocaire College not only discriminated against him, but fired the natural sciences professor in retaliation for his complaint.
ABC News reports that Marosan, who holds an M.D. from Hungary, filed his first complaint in April 2009, then amended it in April 2010, two months after he was fired, to include charges of discrimination based on sexual orientation. He claimed that two administrators, including one priest, gave preferential treatment to young gay members of the “Merry Men” and to female colleagues.
Top Gay-Friendly and Gay-Unfriendly Colleges
Every year, The Princeton Review publishes College rankings based on a survey of over 120,000 college students nationwide that ranks colleges and university for their performance in various area including, but not limited to academics, demographics, and quality of life.
Amongst the rankings are the most and least gay friendly colleges and universities. According to the list that was released yesterday, topping the list of gay-friendly schools are Emerson College, Stanford University and NYU. On the list of least accepting are Grove City College, Thomas Aquinas College and Hampden-Sydney College.
For more information and to find schools that fit your life, visit:
