Transgender clause proposed for MU discrimination protection

Gender identity and sexual orientation include different issues.

By Eva Dou

Published March 5, 2009

A student-led effort to add a gender identity clause to the UM system's non-discrimination policy is gaining momentum after several student groups met Wednesday to draft a proposal.

Transgender people are not protected against discrimination under current university policy. The proposal would add "gender identity and expression" to the currently protected categories of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability and status as a protected veteran.

"We think people are realizing this isn't just about transgender people," Triangle Coalition President Ashe Kolieboi said. "People in general don't want to go to a school that isn't accepting."

Missouri Students Association Senate leaders are working with Triangle Coalition and other groups to write the proposal, which they want to submit to the UM Board of Curators through Chancellor Brady Deaton. The Board of Curators would have to approve the amendment.

Deaton expressed support for the measure at a meeting with students last month, but Kolieboi said the chancellor had told them they might face difficulties with the board.

The last effort to amend the non-discrimination policy was an eight-year struggle that began in 1995 when pressure from state legislators prompted the Curators to remove the sexual orientation clause, according to previous Maneater reports. When the board reinstated the clause in 2003 after intensive student and faculty lobbying, several legislators threatened to withdraw the university's state funding.

Board Chairwoman Cheryl Walker said in an e-mail that the gender identity clause has not been brought to the board.

"Perhaps I need more education, because I would have thought 'gender identity and expression, including transgender identity' was already included within 'sexual orientation,'" she said.

Gender identity is a person's emotional and psychological sense of being male or female, while sexual orientation refers to a person's innate sexual attraction.

The other eight curators either did not respond to requests for comment or declined to comment.

Kolieboi said expanding the non-discrimination policy is an issue of protection, not politics.

"This issue has been politicized and seen as a liberal or progressive issue, but it's just an equality issue," he said.

Students have lobbied for a gender identity clause for several years, but this year marks the furthest the efforts have gone, Kolieboi said.

MSA Senate Speaker Jonathan Mays helped draft a bill Wednesday calling for MSA to petition all MU schools, departments and subsidiaries to include gender identity and expression in their individual non-discrimination policies. He said getting approval department by department was how students built momentum for the sexual orientation clause last time.

Several MSA Senate leaders are also pushing for a gender identity clause in the MSA non-discrimination policy. The Senate will vote next week on whether to hold a student referendum on the amendment in early April.

At the meeting, MSA Senator Phyllis Williams said their cause is helped by the fact that 266 universities and colleges already have protection for gender expression.

"This is not radical by any means," Williams said.

MU Chief Diversity Officer Roger Worthington said he and the chancellor supported the principle of transgender inclusion. He said he believed acquiring support for the proposal would require educating the community about the effects of gender discrimination and the difference between transgender issues and sexual orientation.

"I believe that once these two objectives have occurred, progress will be most likely to occur," Worthington said.

Kolieboi said he hopes a gender identity clause will lend weight to transgender issues on campus, such as a lack of unisex bathrooms.

"Everyone wants to feel that they are included in the fabric of the university," Kolieboi said.