ASFLC Considers Institutionalizing Posters Following Discriminatory Acts
By: Taylor Hutchison Indy Staff Writer
The Associated Students of Fort Lewis College discussed transgender rights, and the posters educating students about the discrimination of transgender people in bathrooms, at the meeting Wednesday night.
First-year-ambassadors, Robert Dennett and Iain McCourt, asked Prism President Xander Hughes to bring attention to the posters.
The posters have repeatedly been removed in the men’s bathrooms in Jones Hall and in Reed Library. This trend was noticed last year and has continued into this semester, Hughes said.
In Reed Library, where the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center is located, the posters were removed three times in one week, Hughes said.
Hughes is not sure if the removal of the posters is a micro-aggression or not. Regardless, transgender students have been made uncomfortable by the act, Hughes said.
“What if you’re in that bathroom at the same time that that person is taking down those posters?” they said, adding that everyone should feel comfortable using the bathrooms on campus.
Hughes acknowledged that there are several gender neutral bathrooms on campus, but said that they are not as convenient as the other bathrooms.
McCourt said that, as a first-year student, he noticed that transgender-bathroom rights were not addressed during orientation, or any other transgender related issue.
He hopes that by starting a conversation with students about what it means to be transgender, that the college will see less discriminatory acts like this one, he said.
Molly Wieser the FLC Title IX coordinator created the poster after she found the image on Instagram and added the FLC logo and resources specific to the college. She then informally hung the posters in bathrooms across campus without approval.
She has not heard any negative comments in regards to the posters since then, but is excited to see how ASFLC plans to establish the posters as legitimate, she said.
Dennett, who also asked Hughes to participate in the meeting, was in favor of institutionalizing the posters across campus.
“I believe this issue to go much deeper than simply posters,” Dennett said. “It’s an institutional problem.