Oct 13, 2006  |  By: ELIZABETH A. PERRY  | COMMENTS     

As of last month, all of the eight colleges and universities that comprise the Ivy League have elected to include gender identity and expression in their non-discrimination policies, according to the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition.

At its September board meeting, Yale University became the final Ivy League school to include transgender students, faculty and staff in its policy.

“It is good news when top institutions of higher learning include gender identity and expression,” said Tyrone Hanley, youth program coordinator for GenderYouth Network. “It’s a good sign for students, faculty and staff at colleges and universities across the nation. This is an opportunity for other institutions to pass protections as well.”

GenderPAC defines gender identity as an individual’s internal sense of being male or female. Gender expression refers to an individual’s outward manifestation of gender through behaviors, actions and dress. Hanley said that policies that include gender identity and expression benefit all students, regardless of how they identify themselves.

GenderPAC’s 2006 Gender Equality National Index for Universities and Schools tracks and evaluates efforts to promote gender identity awareness and ban discrimination in schools. According to the index, 75 colleges and universities have included gender identity and expression in their policies.

Despite growing awareness of transgender issues at schools, Hanley said the idea of incorporating gender identity and expression into nondiscrimination policies is so new that schools are just beginning to catch on and revamp their policies. The first school to add gender protections to its policy was the University of Iowa in 1996 and 21 schools added the protections in 2005. Brown University became the first of the Ivies to include gender identity and expression in 2002, followed by the University of Pennsylvania in 2003 and Cornell University in 2005. Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth and Yale have all expanded their policies this year.

Riki Wilchins, executive director of GenderPAC, said that 20 years ago it was hard enough for college students, faculty and staff to come out of the closet as gay, lesbian or bisexual. Now that more schools are including transgender people in their policies, it’s clear that progress is being made, Wilchins said, adding that today’s students see gender stereotyping as a human rights issue.

“It brings together gay rights, transgender rights and women’s rights,” Wilchins said. “Gender rights work comes from gender and queer theory. It’s what they are learning in the classroom.”

The University of Pennsylvania was one of the first Ivy League schools to include gender identity in its non-discrimination policy. Erin Cross, associate director of the school’s LGBT Center, said the City of Philadelphia’s Human Rights Commission passed its fair employment ordinance before the university did, making it easier for the school to add transgender protections to the policy. Cross said the LGBT Center Advisory Board put together a proposal to include the protections and presented it to the University Council. The proposal passed through two subcommittees unanimously before it was recommended to the Board of Trustees, which approved it with no problem.

She said some of the Ivies might have delayed adding transgender protections to their policies because it might not have been seen as an important issue.

“Some schools might have felt the category of gender protects people,” she said. “So they didn’t feel they had to add anyone else.”

Uriel Barrera-Vasquez, assistant director of alumni diversity for Dartmouth College, said the gender language was added in June 2006. He said the reaction of many alums has been shock that they were not already included.

“People assumed [gender identity and expression] were protected under sexual orientation,” he said. “So no one paid close attention to the policy.”

 He said DGALA, the school’s gay and lesbian alumni association, advocated for the policy to be changed two years ago when a transgender alumni pointed out that the college did not have specific language to address gender identity in its policy.

Vasquez said that most students were oblivious to the missing piece of policy, but that they reacted positively to the change when they found out about it.

“The students are more aware of transgendered students, professors and administrators,” he said. “It raises the profile of transgender people so that people are more cognizant of their needs and issues.”

Cross said University of Pennsylvania students have benefited across the board since the protections were implemented three years ago, but there is still more work to do. ...