Claiming that Barnard College’s women-only mission is “incredibly backwards” and “second wave,” LGBTQIA (by the way, when were the “I” and “A” added to what seems to be an ever-growing abbreviation?) students at the school say the institution needs “more inclusive” policies about who’s “allowed to exist on campus.”
“Barnard was founded as a space for women that weren’t being given opportunities for education,” student Rowan Hepps Keeney said. “This should be a space for people that value their education enough that they want their voice to be prioritized, and I don’t think women are the only people that fall into that category.”
Though the school has revised its admissions policies to admit trans applicants, it still requires students to “consistently live and identify as women.”
The Columbia Spectator reports:
Hepps Keeney said there was a need for the college to support students who identified as gender nonbinary or genderqueer.
“We need to validate everyone’s identities here who aren’t women, and that’s not happening as much as there should be,” Hepps Keeney said.
Some students at the town hall said they would like Barnard to implement some form of sensitivity training—especially regarding pronoun usage—for students and staff.
MORE: Barnard joins list of colleges admitting trans women
Other students suggested that specific floors in residential halls be designated for LGBTQIA members of the Barnard community, and SGA representatives said that $30,000 of the council’s endowment fund could possibly go toward implementing this proposal. …
Students who attended the workshop shared how they saw Barnard as being a place where they could have conversations like these.
“I never had a class that discussed sexuality and gender. My high school was like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re accepting but we don’t talk about that,’” Marie Sgourous, BC ’19, said.
[Associate Dean for Student Life Alina] Wong said that she hoped these workshops would help continue a conversation on campus about microaggressions and covert discrimination.
Barnard may not feel any pressing need to address such concerns, however.
Wong said that “she was expecting 150 people to show up to the workshop, but roughly 20 students were present,” and “close to half of them were peer facilitators or student leaders from different LGBTQIA groups on campus.”
MORE: New Barnard College curriculum to teach its female students ‘how to think’
MORE: No one shows up for sexual-violence prevention workshop at Barnard, alleged hotbed of assault
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