(Photo courtesy of UMass Lowell) “UMass Lowell has an LGBTQ+ Resource Center, but students face struggles beyond the scope of the office.”

Riley Fontana
Connector Editor

“Dear [Deadname],” is how a good chunk of my emails from the school arrive in my inbox. I have changed my name through the school, got a new ID card and email—everything. I changed my name through SiS and all the emails that come through that system use my deadname. So what was the point of changing my name if I am just going to be deadnamed in school-issued emails?

UMass Lowell prides itself on being diverse and inclusive, showing off their LGBT offices and Pride events. However, as a queer student, I fail to see this throughout the whole campus.

I knew I was trans long before I got to UMass Lowell and was excited to see their Ally Spaces and the other programs they used to boast their inclusivity claims. Then I arrived on campus. I have been living on campus for three years now, and my gender identity has always made me feel different from students and professors.

I will start with students because we cannot expect them all to be perfectly accepting. My gender identity was used against me in student organizations, having been asked to publicly out myself to improve their optics. I have classmates who misgender me constantly no matter how much anyone corrects them. I cannot expect UMass Lowell to be able to do anything about intolerant students, but you would expect them not to boast safety on campus when classmates can make queer people feel isolated.

In almost all my classes I am asked to tell my professor my pronouns, which I like. What I do not like is being misgendered the entire semester. I have professors who make me announce my pronouns to the whole class to just disregard it and use pronouns with which I do not identify. I have had professors who will misgender me to other students in the class, and do not change when I correct them. It makes me feel so worthless in the eyes of the professor who cannot even be bothered to gender their students correctly.

I have sat in classes where the professor is openly and outwardly transphobic. When these concerns were brought to the school, all they did was say, “That’s not what he meant when he said that.” Not only does the professor see me as less than, but the school also cannot bother to show they care? There is a huge lack of respect for queer students on this campus despite claims of inclusivity.

I have also been thinking about the lack of gender-neutral bathrooms. As someone who mostly stays on South Campus, that is what I will address. On South Campus, there are four gender-neutral bathrooms, all in O’Leary library. I have yet to be in a dorm building with gender-neutral bathrooms. The only gender-neutral bathrooms in dorm buildings I have seen are in suite style dorms, a two-stall toilet only bathroom in the basement of Concordia and on the first floor of Concordia which contains a shower but is the bathroom that first floor residents are meant to share.

Because of where I am in my transition to shower and use the bathroom in my dorm building I use the women’s room. I am terrified to use the bathroom of the gender I more identify with. With no gender neutral bathrooms openly available to students, we feel the need to gender ourselves just to use the bathroom.

While suite style dorms offer these private and gender neutral bathrooms for everyone living in that dorm, it opens other issues. It’s so much more expensive to live in these suites than it is to live in a double in a building over. Then there is the hardest part: finding three to seven other people that I can feel comfortable living with and not have to worry about my identity around them.

Trans students can already garner so much fear about dorming because there is no way to guarantee our roommates being accepting. I live in a single because of the fear of living with a stranger who will be uncomfortable with or against my identity. UMass Lowell does offer something called “gender inclusive housing” which students can check off if they are okay living with people of different gender identities, and this is the least they can offer. There is still the fear, at least for me, that because I am not far along in my transition roommates could still target me.

My subjective experiences cannot speak for all queer folks on campus, but a lot of people I have spoken to have had similar experiences. UMass Lowell has no right to calls themselves inclusive and accepting when a majority of their trans and genderqueer students feel excluded and left out.