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On March 8th, Champlain College tweeted to celebrate international women’s day. Their choice of words and the overall message left many students feeling ignored and angered.
In the posts (shown below) Champlain College lumped people who identified as nonbinary with women. The Women’s and Gender Center also felt the need to specify trans women in their post, which some students in the LGBTQ+ community said felt invalidating as trans women are included in the word women. Located here are the Wayback Machine links for each post. (Champlain College and Women’s and Gender Center)
Even though they deleted the post and apologized on Twitter, the original post with poor wording is still available on their Instagram account. The Women’s and Gender Center also apologized, with their apology linked here.
While some students have issues with this apology, the entire situation leads to a discussion within the school’s LGBTQ+ community about how the school treats their nonbinary and transgender students. Many of these students felt that the school didn’t necessarily respect their identities, one student said that “It feels like it's mostly performative. They claim to include trans or nonbinary students but in practice, it doesn't usually play out that way.”
Many students say that this isn’t the first incident where the school chose to lump together people who identify as nonbinary and people who identify as women. A student (who preferred their name remained off the record) said “I have been invited to countless events for ‘womxn,’ despite me asking early in my sophomore year to not receive invitations like that anymore. My suggestion to make a separate event for nonbinary people or otherwise change the language regarding the event seemed to have fallen on deaf ears.”
Even the name of the school’s gender center is the “Women and Gender Center,” which has led to many students feeling uncomfortable. First-year Game Design student Sam K-J has said that “As an amab Nonbinary person I feel like they see nonbinary as being ‘woman-lite’” and added a solution would be changing the name of the WGC to be all-inclusive. Another part of this solution would be hiring nonbinary and others who don’t identify with their assigned gender at birth as staff members.
Fourth-year Psychology and Secondary Education student Jayy said that even from their first year it was clear that Champlain didn’t do more than just the bare minimum for their transgender students. “I've only felt supported by a very few individual people, mostly other trans students. The college does not take into account trans students existing in their design of anything, including academics, policies/procedures, physical spaces, or hiring of faculty/staff.”
When asked about how the school can fix these issues, they said that if the school actively listened to their nonbinary and transgender students about what is needed, the proper changes can be made to have Champlain be more safe and welcoming of a place.
The general consensus amongst most of the students within the LGBTQ+ community is that the school needs to be more proactive in its efforts to include trans individuals. “Reach out to trans people. Put them on your team, in your faculty.”
By Harper Bennett
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