UMass embraces gender neutrality

By Kristin Palpini
Staff Writer

Published on July 24, 2009

They may not have meant to, but some college and university professors have accidentally "outed" transgender students during roll call.

However, starting this semester, the University of Massachusetts is taking steps to protect the gender identities of its students with some technological tweaking that has been three years in the works.

In the fall, professors and administrators will receive class rosters and other documents with transgender students' chosen names as well as their legal ones in a move intended to prevent professors from calling students by unintentionally gender-revealing names.

Safe environment

It may seem like a small step, but Brett-Genny Janiczek Beemyn, director of the UMass Stonewall Center, an advocacy and support group for LGBT students and causes, said the name initiative is already being sought by other colleges eager to provide a safe environment for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students.

"If you have the name 'Sue,' but you look like a guy, it's really going to cause problems for that person," said Janiczek Beemyn. "The concern was for students being outed to other people. I think you're going to start seeing more schools doing this."

UMass is adding the name option along with gender-neutral housing to its accommodations for LGBT students this academic year. While UMass has one of the country's oldest LGBT "theme" residential floors, 2009-2010 will mark the first year students of different sexes can share a room on that floor.

"UMass Amherst has been in the forefront when it has come to its LGBT theme housing options," said Shane Windmeyer, executive director of Campus Pride, an online resource for LGBT people searching for a higher education. The site ranks UMass Amherst as one of the top 50 most gay-friendly campuses in the country.

"More and more campuses are recognizing the value in being seen as a gay-friendly and LGBT supportive campus," he said. "Since UMass implemented its theme floor we have seen nearly 100 colleges do similar inclusive housing options over the last decade."

Janiczek Beemyn has been working with UMass administrators to change the university's name policy for three years.

Convincing the university to institute a new naming policy wasn't the issue, Janiczek Beemyn said, it was getting over the technological hurdle of tweaking the school's software system, PeopleSoft, to incorporate the alternate name that took time.

"It didn't have an easy way to accommodate giving people a different way to identify," Janiczek Beemyn said.

Preferred names will appear on students' main Student Center page on SPIRE and on class rosters, among other informal documents. Legal names will appear on items such as financial aid and health insurance papers.

Since news of the preferred name capability was posted on the Stonewall Centers' Web page, Janiczek Beemyn has been getting calls from schools interested in the technology to adopt the policy.

"A lot of schools have contacted me about how we were able to do it from a technical standpoint," Janiczek Beemyn said. "They want to share the process."

The UMass software breakthrough is coming roughly at the same time the University of Vermont figured out how to do the same with their system, Banner, another widespread college administration program.

"When I was in class, the professors would look down the roster and be calling roll and say the wrong name and then correct themselves in front of the whole class," Davin Sokup, a transgender University of Vermont student, told the university communication department.

"I'm out on campus, but it's still very uncomfortable to walk around the next day and wonder who's seeing me and telling their friend, Oh, like, that's the kid."

Finding ways to accommodate transgender students has been a growing field on college campuses, Janiczek Beemyn said, as more students are identifying as transgender.

Concrete statistics on the transgender population are not readily available.

Surveys predict a population range of anywhere from 1 transgender person per 100,000 people to 1 in 500, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington D.C. based LGBT rights group.

"Increasingly, people are identifying openly as transgender," Janiczek Beemyn said. "It's more of an option now."