A transgender
Southern Utah University student has been denied housing in
a male dorm next semester because he has yet to undergo
gender-reassignment surgery.
Kourt Osborn, 22,
is undergoing hormone therapy but has not had the
permanent surgery, the Deseret Morning News
reported Tuesday.
"They are really
asking too much of people," Osborn said in the
article. "Sexual-reassignment surgery is so expensive and so
ineffective that many transgender people, like myself, don't
get it."
Osborn lived on
campus in the women's dorms for the 2004-2005 school
year. Since then, he has lived as a man and explained the
change in his application to live in the men's dorms
in spring 2008. After he submitted his housing
application on December 1, he was asked to meet with Neuman
Duncan, the director of university housing 12 days later.
"Duncan told me
that a sociology professor on campus believed I am
'not truly a transsexual' because I do not seek
sexual-reassignment surgery," Osborn said in a
statement released by Equality Utah. "Duncan refused
to identify this professor, or the 'team' of people
Duncan allegedly met with about my housing request. I don't
believe Duncan consulted with any experts on
transgender issues either."
Equality Utah
spokesman Will Carlson said in a statement that Osborn's
request to live on campus is reasonable.
"SUU is out of
line," says Carlson. "The university's demands
are very intrusive, and even if Kourt gave the school
all those documents, it would be in no better of a
position to protect him or any other student than it
was after Kourt explained his situation."
Mara Keisling,
executive director of the National Center for Transgender
Equality in Washington, D.C., is quoted in the release as
saying the school is "way behind the times with
regard to discrimination and old stereotypes of what a
transgender person is. Most every university in the
country has already thought through this issue and come to
the obvious understanding that all students
need and deserve a safe and accepting campus. That a
public university funded with public money would
discriminate against a student this way should be
troubling to all Utahans."
Osborn is
currently barred from living on campus, even though two of
the four dormitories feature private bedrooms and
private, lockable bathrooms.
Carlson said that
the student may be able to show discrimination based on
gender, which is illegal in Utah, because he has changed the
gender listed on his driver's license to male. Michael
Carter, an attorney representing the school, says that
because Osborn is unable to prove that he has had
gender-reassignment surgery, he cannot live in a male
dorm.
"We have housed
another transgender student in the past who has met
our baseline criteria. This student has not," Carter told
the Morning News. "We are not in the process of
discriminating against transgender students."
SUU does not
provide mixed housing. While some dormitories have private
bedrooms, students still share bathrooms, a spokeswoman said
to the Morning News. She also said that the
university deals with transgender housing requests on
a case-by-case basis to evaluate the student's needs.
She said that there must be a clear classification
because administrators "can't knowingly put a female
student in with male students or a male student in with
female students."
Osborn said that
if the situation were resolved and he was granted a room
on campus, he would still accept the offer. (The
Advocate)
