Hidden Barriers

As a result of my participation in the Vagina Monologues, I was approached by my university’s television station to participate in a documentary. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first documentary of its kind done by the university. It was called Hidden Barriers. The purpose of the documentary was to highlight the barriers that students encounter as they go through their academic studies. I agreed to volunteer because I was fairly certain that they didn’t have any other transgender people participating. In this, I was proven correct.

Among the people interviewed was our first black female Student Senate President, a little person who decided not to opt for a surgery that would make her taller, a student who had been discharged from the Marines for being gay, an over-40 non-traditional student trying to find his second career, a person who had moved from Washington D.C. to our rural area of Shippensburg and me. I approached it from a fresh perspective even though I held an event to explain transgender issues to the campus last semester. I suspect that a lot of the people there were the communication and journalism majors who had heard about the event because their instructors mentioned it. At the same time, though, I didn’t want to start from the beginning by explaining the difference between sex and gender. To me, that discussion is old hat.

Instead, I approached it from the perspectives of the obstacles that I’ve had to encounter while in my time at Shippensburg. Most of these things I’ve already discussed elsewhere, but here’s a refresher course for those of you who might be unfamiliar with the impediments I’ve faced. As a transgender person, there aren’t any counselors on campus who can prescribe me hormones. I need to drive about forty miles one way for that. The university refuses to see me as female, despite the fact that my driver’s license (issued in Pennsylvania) says that I am. I have to pay 950 dollars extra every semester to live in what’s called a medical single to have my own bathroom. Given that recent assault a transgender woman faced in Maryland while trying to use a public bathroom, there’s certainly a case to say that’s it is necessary. Yet, the university does not want to cooperate with me. Nor do they want to admit in any official or public document that LGBT people even exist. I am a member of an invisible population where the administration is concerned, and no one is obligated to treat invisible people fairly. This theme seemed to hold true for the other participants of the documentary as well.

From the perspective of university policy, whatever the norm is, that is the most important thing. The university does not embrace diversity and does not consider in what ways some students might be marginalized by favoritism towards the majority. Some card readers are too high for a little person to reach, and the counter tops in the dining halls are too high as well. There is not much of a support network for non-traditional students on campus; there is a Non-Traditional Student Organization (NTSO) and a Non-trad lounge. However, just being a non-trad student isn’t enough to grant you access to the lounge. Instead, you need to request that your card be enabled to enter the room. I’m pretty sure the age of a student only changes once a year, and it doesn’t go backwards. So the university’s lack of awareness towards non-traditional students in this regard is very telling. As a non-traditional student myself, I often feel that I am alone and that I am the only person over 25 on campus. Cognitively, I know that is not true but there is not much evidence to prove it to me.

Shippensburg University has also been around since 1871. It became a state school in 1983, 112 years later. In the 28 years since it’s been a state school, the university has only had one black female Student Senate President. It’s been 37 years since the Civil Rights Act was passed, yet it took this long for black people to even begin to be seen as political equals to white people. Shippensburg University in particular has been a university that generally lags behind the rest of society. Title IX was amended in 1972, yet the Women’s Center at the university opened more than a decade later. I mention this to illustrate the magnitude of the President’s accomplishment by winning the election. Shippensburg is a university that needs to be pushed forward because it does not tend to move on its own. Ironically enough, the people who face barriers through college are often the ones who push the most for change.

I would like to say that these sort of challenges are faced only by college students, but that’s simply not true. Colleges don’t exist in a vacuum; they are as much a part of society as any other organization. Consequently, the influence of society bleeds through the policies and attitudes in the university. In a very real way, institutes of higher learning often do not exhibit objectivity in the shaping of its rules. I’ve often heard stories from the time before the university had a Multicultural Building, and when black people were jeered at as they walked about on the street. There was anger in the black community and it came close to becoming a violent conflict between the racial groups. It was a scene that you might have expected to see under the watch of Governor George Wallace of Alabama. The presence of National Guardsmen would not have been out of place in such a scene. Despite the fact that the university has come a long way since those days, the separatism of the racial groups still remains. It is not nearly as noticeable today, but it is nonetheless still something that students of color struggle against.

At Shippensburg, we have a system of organizational towers. The Women’s Center often doesn’t mix with the Psychology Department. The Multicultural Center often doesn’t mix with the people who run the television station. There is isolation within communities, and I suspect that this exists outside of college as well. During the program, when of the television anchors interviewed Soledad O’Brien, she mentioned how there were no people of color as anchors at CNN. I personally wonder whether this is due to racism or whether it’s simply a matter of people of color not learning how to be a television anchor. Are there a multitude of options to select from when it comes to black people on television or does Time Warner simply not give a shit?

At the collegiate level, what can be done to ensure that not only people of color, but all people, receive an equal chance to succeed at whatever they want to do? To begin with, student organizations need to come out of their shells and interact with each other. LGBT people need to attend programs held by the Asian American Organization. Business majors need to come to Take Back the Night. Everyone needs to experience a different perspective outside of what they normally experience, if only one time, to give them the chance to re-consider their definition of normality.

In other words, the easiest way to break down hidden barriers is to bring them out into the open so that everyone knows about them. As long as people remain stuck in their own groups with the same experiences, such barriers will remain with us.