Editorial: Through transgender policy, Pitt disregards student opinion

Pitt students recently received an email from Dean Kathy Humphrey containing this year’s Pitt Student Experience in the Research University survey.

One of the prompts piqued our interest: “Students are respected here regardless of their gender.” Agree or disagree? Pitt students recently received an email from Dean Kathy Humphrey containing this year’s Pitt Student Experience in the Research University survey.

One of the prompts piqued our interest: “Students are respected here regardless of their gender.” Agree or disagree?

If you agree, allow us the pleasure of bringing you up to speed on the University’s abhorrent transgender policies.

Last week, Pitt’s unofficial custom of case-by-case dealings with transgender students and which restrooms they may use were rescinded in favor of an new, unwritten policy. The policy says that in order to use any gendered facility on campus — some gender-neutral ones do exist, though they aren’t prevalent — one must use a bathroom that matches the sex on one’s birth certificate.

The Pitt News reports that in order to update one’s birth certificate, one must have sex reassignment surgery, which can be prohibitively expensive, and then present documentation to a judge. In some states, such as Ohio, one cannot change the gender listed on his or her birth certificate.

But the underlying issue is not only the University’s blatant disregard for its transgender students — it is its blatant disregard for all of its students.

Imagine if every student filled out Humphrey’s questionnaire and marked “strongly disagree” when it asked if students were respected at Pitt regardless of their gender. (After all, quite obviously, they are not.)

That’s right — nothing would change.

There are a lot of big decisions made at Pitt without any student participation. For instance, back in November, The Pitt News sought information about why Pitt does not allow for gender-neutral housing options and was completely shut out of any explanation whatsoever.

The transgender bathroom policy is just another decision handed down from on high, and the University, of course, is not going invite any kind of student input or even discuss why the policy exists.

At a meeting last Tuesday, Pitt announced the new policy through the mouth of an employee who said she represented Pitt’s offices of General Counsel and Human Resources.

At the very least, Pitt should have a written record detailing the parameters of this policy. Using a word-of-mouth approach, as demonstrated by the University’s anonymous messenger, is patronizing and confusing.

Thus, transgender students, at the moment, have only become aware of the University’s policy through this bizarre meeting between the anonymous representative and Pitt’s Anti-Discriminatory Policies Committee, which advises the University Senate but does not make policy.

And the ADP committee, effectively a powerless advisory body whose two student members have no voting power, just last month unanimously passed a resolution that would allow every student to use the bathroom of the gender he or she identifies with, not the bathroom of his or her natal sex.

For Pitt to turn around and say that, in fact, it will identify people only by the sexes presented on their birth certificates is a  hypocritical move that shows the sheer impotence of the ADP as well as the obvious disrespect Pitt has toward it.

We see a pattern here.

At this point, there is no reason to believe that the University had any students in mind while forming this policy. Therefore, there is no point in giving a generous reading into it.

Time after agonizing time, Pitt shows its despicably self-serving tendencies.