Solidarity and support on Transgender Day of Visibility

CSB+SJU student organization Queer Proud Lavender Union for Students (QPLUS) held a Transgender Day of Visibility poster–making session on March 12 from 5 to 6 p.m. and hung the finished poster in Gorecki Fireside on Monday, stationed there for as long as allowed. Students, faculty, staff and community members joined together in the Multicultural Student Lounge to fill out individual pieces of paper — either wholly pink or blue — that were then joined together to create the transgender flag.

CSB seniors and QPLUS Coordinators Alias Bachmeier, Miel Aronson and Chloe Norlin went around to various tables and welcomed people to the event, and Bachmeier delivered a short presentation on the history and importance of Transgender Day of Visibility.

“Because the world kinds of wants to push trans people aside and hide them away and kind of erase their identities almost…we’re here and we’re loud and you have to acknowledge us,” Bachmeier said.

Transgender Day of Visibility is an annual international celebration on March 31 that was started in 2010 by transgender advocate Rachel Crandall.

After she realized an overwhelming majority of transgender stories concentrated on the violence perpetuated against the transgender community, she created a day where people could celebrate transgender lives and acknowledge the discrimination they still face as a community.

Before Transgender Day of Visibility, the only day dedicated to the trans community was Transgender Day of Remembrance, started in 1999 and observed annually on Nov. 20; this day is limited to remembering transgender people who have lost their lives to anti-trans hate crimes.

QPLUS has routinely put on events for Transgender Day of Visibility, but this was the first year they decided to create a banner.

CSB senior Autumn Green was one of the students who joined in making the banner. “I think particularly with the political climate trying to erase trans lives, it’s important that trans people and their allies be louder than ever,” Green said.

In the past few months, transgender people have seen increased and targeted attacks on their rights and daily lives. The American Civil Liberties Union has mapped 527 anti-LGTBQ+ bills in the United States this year, with 14 anti-LGTBQ+ bills in Minnesota and nine specifically targeting school sports.

Additionally, the federal government has issued an executive order titled “Restoring Biological Truth,” which only identifies two genders in the United States: male and female.

The genders must correlate to a person’s assigned sex at birth.

Anti-trans policies impact universities and their students. On March 19, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration will suspend $175 million in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania, one of eight Ivy League universities in the United States, for their “policies forcing women to compete in with men in sports.”

According to The Daily Pennsylvania, in February the University of Pennsylvania’s athletic department removed the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion site from its website, which included the inclusion of transgender student athletes.

The ways universities have responded to the federal government highlight their lack of transparency regarding transgender students. This includes CSB+SJU, who have yet to put up the transgender policy on the website despite telling The Record that they were “working on getting it back on the site” over a month ago.

When asked if they would like to say anything specific to the universities during this event, Bachmeier had one response: “to quote myself [from their Letter to the Editor on March 6], put up a policy or make a real statement,” Bachmeier said.