Count on the University of Oklahoma to buckle under pressure from LGBT activists – and possibly the Obama administration – and scrap a policy that requires transgender students to ask for permission to live in housing that doesn’t match their biological sex.
The Oklahoma Daily profiles one transgender graduate student, Paula Schonauer, who is “concerned” that the university requires students to have already completed sexual reassignment surgery if they want automatic approval to live with others of that sex:
“It requires students to submit proof of medical procedures in order to have a nondiscriminatory dormitory assignment.” …
“Almost nobody, no transgender person, is able to have gender reassignment surgery before the age of 18.”
Existing OU policy allows for “gender sensitive housing” for students with “unique circumstances,” with determinations made on a case-by-case basis – a situation that Schonauer calls “stigmatizing.”
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A spokeswoman portrays the “special consideration” policy as designed for anyone whose “learning experience” and “personal development” is dependent on “a specific type of environment.”
The Daily notes that the Obama administration’s recent guidance – telling schools that get federal funding to let students use facilities that correspond with their gender identity – does not carry the force of law.
But the newspaper fails to explain that the administration has used similar guidance for five years to threaten colleges that don’t immediately change their sexual-misconduct adjudications or admit to prior wrongdoing, with no institution yet challenging the government in court.
That’s probably why the University of Oklahoma said immediately after the gender-identity guidance that it encourages students to use the restroom “in which they feel safest” – citing legal compliance, as the Daily noted.
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