UConn Journalism Reporting Podcast

Tran­script:

“Hel­lo every­body, wel­come back to UConn Jour­nal­ism Report­ing here today with a sto­ry on how the trans com­mu­ni­ty at UConn is doing.

I am here today with the assis­tant direc­tor of the rain­bow Cen­ter. Yeah. Woo. What is your name? My name is Ian. Ian Schick. I use they them their pro­nouns and I’m the assis­tant direc­tor of The Rain­bow Cen­ter. Yes, yeah.

Here was mixed.

Today to talk about well, their role in UCon­n’s sort of gay club. No, I’m kidding.

No. I mean like what would you explain? Like the rain­bow Cen­ter does? Exact­ly. Yeah, so the rain­bow Cen­ter exists as the I’ll put it as the cen­tral point for lgbtq stu­dents to find resources or con­nec­tion through­out the Yukon sys­tem because we do work with the region­al cam­pus­es to the best of our abil­i­ty. So what that means is like, yes, we pro­vide direct resources. We have a phys­i­cal office that stu­dents can come and hang out. That is a safer place than some parts of Cam­pus. You know, we are an office that asks you, your pro­nouns and does­n’t assume any­thing about you, which might not be the same across cam­pus. We pro­vide our gen­der for me cloth­ing, clos­ets safer, sex, Sup­ply’s, our pro­grams in gen­er­al, that are about a lot of dif­fer­ent things, whether they are just hang out time, so that you can be with oth­er queer peo­ple and not have to be the one or one of you.

In exact­ly. Some of them are edu­ca­tion­al events where we’re either try­ing to pro­vide resources for lgbtq stu­dents to have more knowl­edge or more resources. And then some of them are edu­ca­tion­al events for the rest of the com­mu­ni­ty like hey come expe­ri­ence the lgbtq com­mu­ni­ty spe­cif­ic to UConn, but in gen­er­al so that you can be a bet­ter informed human.

Sup­port­ing your lgbtq friends or fam­i­ly mem­bers. So, one of my first ques­tions was for the peo­ple in the audi­ence who have nev­er heard of being trans, what isn’t

Okay, so for me, and prob­a­bly for the rain­bow Cen­ter, a good work­ing def­i­n­i­tion, because this is the com­pli­cat­ed thing. Trans­formed me a lot of things to a lot of dif­fer­ent peo­ple. So a good like Base­line work­ing def­i­n­i­tion is trans or trans­gen­der, just sim­ply means if through the course of your life, you do not iden­ti­fy with the gen­der that you were assigned at Birth. The M or the F that’s under birth cer­tifi­cate. Con­grat­u­la­tions. You’re in some way trans that could be a lot of dif­fer­ent things. There are folks who seek tran­si­tion and are try­ing to tran­si­tion from male to female. There are folks who don’t seek any amount of tran­si­tion we can turn on bina­ry in there but like good Base­line def­i­n­i­tion is if you’re not cis­gen­dered mean­ing that your iden­ti­ty match­es. What’s on your birth cer­tifi­cate from birth?

Your chance. Yeah.

Like what is tran­si­tion­ing? Look like tran­si­tion­ing looks like every­thing. So it means for the indi­vid­ual get­ting to the point where they are hap­py com­fort­able and out in the world as the gen­der, they want to be. That is social­ly. Telling peo­ple com­ing out, chang­ing names, chang­ing their Face­book pro­file pic­ture. I don’t think peo­ple use Face­book any­more. I think that dates me.

Chang­ing all their pro­file pic­tures, like liv­ing out in the world, all the social things close, hair make­up or not make­up, you know? And then all the like surg­eries as well. If that is a route that peo­ple want to take whether it is Top surgery, bot­tom surgery, tak­ing hor­mones, all those dif­fer­ent things. So, like tran­si­tion is just that process of get­ting to the. I now see in the mir­ror, what I am expect­ing to see and peo­ple in my life, see me for what they are expect­ing to see in that all like match­es just get­ting to that point that’s transition.

Yeah, no, that’s a real­ly good way to put it now. Like

Like many peo­ple, like who? It’s like, social for them, but also like many peo­ple who, like, specif­i­cal­ly hor­mones are like, like a, can you sor­ry? I know. I’m a lot of expo­si­tion but no, it’s impor­tant. Like what would you so like what do hor­mones do like for med­ical tran­si­tion­ing? Yeah, I mean, hor­mones will affect peo­ple in dif­fer­ent ways, but broad­ly, they do the things that puber­ty was, the­o­ret­i­cal­ly sup­posed to do should if you had had

The like puber­ty expe­ri­ence that you were expect­ing to have. So for like trans mas­cu­line folks who might be on testos­terone. It means hair grow­ing out of who knows where in many dif­fer­ent, it means your voice might drop. It means fat dis­tri­b­u­tion changes and the not the same, but sim­i­lar things. Well, then hap­pen for folks who are on prog­es­terone and estro­gen and who might be tak­ing testos­terone block­ers of fat dis­tri­b­u­tion, you know, you facial struc­ture does change as well. Like you will see your hips wide and a lit­tle bit like where you won’t have some of the exact same things of going through puber­ty. But that’s what hor­mones, because that’s what hor­mones do in the body nat­u­ral­ly. So when you hit puber­ty as a in quotes, male like you start to devel­op facial hair, your tes­ti­cles drop, your voice drops, like that’s what the hor­mones start chang­ing. Like, that’s what they cause and effect on. And

Puber­ty is dif­fer­ent for every­one even when you’re cis­gen­der. So it’s a wide vari­ety. But yeah, that’s that’s what hor­mones do and so you take a dosage that works for you, some folks real­ly low dose and they’re look­ing for very grad­ual, gen­tle changes. You know, peo­ple do dosage dif­fer­ent­ly and that’s a very much a con­ver­sa­tion with your doc­tor because there are cer­tain health con­cerns depend­ing on your med­ical his­to­ry that they have to work through and decide what dosage is going to be best and safest and get you, the changes, you want to see

Say I just want to get that out of the way basi­cal­ly. So yeah, back to UConn. So so what would you say like are there like sup­port or Health­care resources at UConn for Trans peo­ple like yes. I like a lot of this infor­ma­tion can be found on the rain­bow Cen­ters web­site rain­bow Cen­ter that you can do edu under our table. For trans­gen­der at Yukon. We have one just like list of ran­dom resources offices that we have his­tor­i­cal­ly worked with who have been help­ful in the past and in the present as well as what I’m pulling more for direct and accu­rate infor­ma­tion, like these all exist. But I want to be able to like actu­al­ly name, some direct things, under our quick answers. We have a num­ber of things around name change and stu­dent male, and the one thing about health insur­ance. So the this is where I’m going to pull you con­stant stu­dent health insur­ance plan, which is called ship, you know, uni­ver­si­ties in their acronyms cur­rent­ly does

Cov­er a num­ber of things that are Quan­ti­fied in like gen­der affirm­ing care. It does cov­er qual­i­fied med­ical health pro­fes­sion­als, coun­sel­ing hor­mone ther­a­py and gen­der-affirm­ing surgery. I and we do have a link that takes you, right to what the fees are and what types of co-pays you’re pay­ing and what some things will be out of pock­et. But the stu­dent health insur­ance plan, does pro­vide a roadmap for sup­port­ing gen­der for me care through just the stu­dent health insur­ance plan. That is con­sid­er­ing if you are a stu­dent who is using the stu­dent health insur­ance plan and not Fam­i­ly Insur­ance. So, you know, if you have fam­i­ly insur­ance, that is going to be your per­son­al health insur­ance plan and whether that cov­ers. But, yes, we do have some cov­er­age and it’s actu­al­ly do a decent bids. That’s pret­ty good cov­er­age. Yeah. No, I remem­ber specif­i­cal­ly, I had a friend.

Tran­si­tion. Using the, I think it was called husky insur­ance or some­thing like that. I believe that’s dif­fer­ent. Right? That might, I think so because I I’ve seen that ref­er­ence gen­er­al­ly in the state so that might be like some­thing through the state of Con­necti­cut. I love how. Yeah, I think it’s

It’s all over, it’s spread­ing spread­ing husky. Um so you work at the rain­bow Cen­ter so would you say you get a lot of trans stu­dents come in? Yes.

There are usu­al­ly, I mean trans stu­dents will come to the rain­bow Cen­ter. Vari­ety of rea­sons. One, we try real­ly hard to get trans stu­dents to come. So a lit­tle bit is like we have cre­at­ed and been at the ori­en­ta­tions and the pre­views, and the first day stu­dent things. So much that we just want, like, we want trans stu­dents to come. I said some of it is we’ve done the hard work to get trans, kids to come to Ama­zon Cen­ter, but we also get tran­si­tions here com­ing look­ing for Com­mu­ni­ty like their their recog­ni­tion, their the only trans per­son that they know for right now, you know, in their class­es or being new to cam­pus for, you know, whether they’re trans­fer stu­dent or a new stu­dent or even Junior’s. I def­i­nite­ly have in my career have had trans stu­dents come out in their Junior and Senior year and it almost as like they’re start­ing Col­lege all over again because I like I got­ta find new friends and some for bad rea­sons. Some good rea­sons I got you know I’m a whole new per­son and I’m

A junior like this is weird. I’m a new per­son, but I’m at the end of col­lege and then some stu­dents are com­ing and seek­ing resources, you know, they are start­ing their Jour­neys or they are start­ing or they have start­ed their Jour­neys and they’re now look­ing for con­nec­tion. So, yeah, we get trans stu­dents. I mean it feels obvi­ous but like yeah.

I mean, I’d hope so.

That would be bad if we got no chance stu­dents at the lgbtq cen­ter and get like a whole oth­er. Oh yeah.

So,

yeah, I

Guess just to get to mass tax. How has the trans com­mu­ni­ty at Yukon been doing? Oh, that that’s a com­pli­cat­ed ques­tion. And it’s a com­pli­cat­ed ques­tion because there are sev­er­al fac­tors that go into it. If we’re look­ing at, just the Yukon con­text, like, just you’re a stu­dent at UConn in Storrs Connecticut.

Here, phys­i­cal­ly, even with the region­al cam­pus­es includ­ed, Water­bury, Stam­ford every point and Hart­ford. And tech­ni­cal­ly the med­ical cam­pus from Farm­ing­ton. I think that’s all the

Things Are.

Pret­ty sol­id. And that is like not to be can not to dis­cred­it or like every­one’s got their own indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ence, and like, your own, like, social net­work, might be dif­fer­ent. But like the legal Land­scap­ing, Con­necti­cut is pret­ty sol­id with with a husky health insur­ance, and the stu­dent health insur­ance and like, resources that we got on cam­pus, like, Base­line needs, can be met here at Uconn and that is pret­ty, like, sol­id con­sid­er­ing some of what we are see­ing across the coun­try. So I have to rec­og­nize that, that does­n’t like, say, that every­one’s gonna have an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence, and then you’re not going to like, no bul­ly­ing hap­pen here like. Yes, that does hap­pen. Peo­ple are com­ing to this Uni­ver­si­ty from our coun­try from across iden­ti­ties, from across a pains about trans peo­ple. So,

That aside legal­ly and resources wise, Con­necti­cut is a pret­ty sol­id state. And I think that says a lot and

That’s not a, it could be worth state­ment, but it kind of it. I think that’s a real­i­ty that we have to con­tend with is like, there are worse con­di­tions that just means that we can actu­al­ly focus on like things around the like more com­pli­cat­ed. New ones prob­lems of like how do we con­tin­u­al­ly push a stu­dent body to be more Pro­gres­sive around trans iden­ti­ties. How do we con­tin­ue to like talk to pro­fes­sors? Because I have seen col­leagues who are in States, like, Flori­da and Texas and what’s anoth­er real­ly bad Bat­tle­ground state for tran­sit. In days, off top, my head Okla­homa, who are putting out legal fires. Like they are just wor­ried about their trans stu­dents, get­ting access to like Jen­nifer for me and care and not being like a tar­get­ed, like,

Intense­ly vio­lent ways that they can’t even begin to be like how do we talk to fac­ul­ty about using pro­nouns? Because we have dump­ster fires over here. So like I have to live in that real­i­ty and I think it is impor­tant to point that out because again, it does­n’t say that you’re not going that you’re going to have this like amaz­ing, like you’re gonna be a trans icon at Yukon. There are still social issues to to tack­le but when the bass is real­ly sol­id, that’s nice. That means less wor­ry­ing about like every day.

Crap. I mean, like, for me per­son­al­ly, like, I believe med­ical tran­si­tion­ing is like one of the biggest issues because like, while pro­nouns and like, get­ting peo­ple’s pro­nouns, right are impor­tant. Like, med­ical tran­si­tion­ing is some­thing that you like have to you kind of need because it’s def­i­nite­ly that I mean every bit of the trans Com­mu­ni­ty has its own things that it needs and def­i­nite­ly like tran­si­tion is a huge thing and when we can cov­er that we can talk about names and we can talk about pro­nouns when like all of those like base things are tak­ing care of again like when you are faced with could like Ten­nessee when they did the drag band. But we knew what the drag band actu­al­ly was because they just labeled a whole bunch of like ran­dom gen­der expres­sion things.

As ille­gal. We knew it was. Oh we walked on the street, we saw some­one that was­n’t our idea of what a woman is or what a man is that we can arrest them when you’re not wear­ing about that. It’s a whole lot eas­i­er to talk about prob­lems because you’re not wor­ried about being arrest­ed. So like it’s again, it’s a dual real­i­ty, so the con­text sol­id you can’t.

Sol­id on the base lev­el things of can you get resources and can you exist as a trans per­son here like Baseline?

Sol­id. I think so is where we start to get into this real­ly com­pli­cat­ed con­ver­sa­tion about.

As a very large State insti­tu­tion, yes, a lot of stu­dents come from Con­necti­cut, but Con­necti­cut itself for being a very small state and from New York so like Con­necti­cut is Tiny, there’s a whole lot of diver­si­ty of thought. In Con­necti­cut, there are very real places in Con­necti­cut, they’re very con­ser­v­a­tive places in Con­necti­cut. They’re very anti-trans areas in Con­necti­cut, and then that is not even con­sid­er­ing where stu­dents are com­ing from from across the coun­try. Let alone a class the globe. So,

That brings about a few dif­fer­ent things, one, it means, we’re get­ting trans stu­dents who are com­ing from places where it was like very overt­ly vio­lent and scary to be trans and no mat­ter how good of a state Con­necti­cut is no mat­ter how Pro­gres­sive you’ve gone was even if we were, like, day one. Every­body pro­noun named tags. Every­body just used pro­nouns. Like, we were per­fect when you come from a state where like your entire child­hood was com­pli­cat­ed and maybe you had sup­port­ive par­ents, maybe you did­n’t but like you lived in the when will my hor­mones be tak­ing away from me, when am I going to be kicked out of school or pos­si­bly kicked out of my house or giv­ing deten­tion or who knows? Why, or when I’m gonna be blast­ed over the Inter­net for being that one trans kid at school, that like asked to use the bath­room. And now, I am a new sto­ry, three states away.

That does a lot to you psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly that like no mat­ter how good a place Yukon is you’re gonna be hor­ri­fied and ner­vous and scared and won­der­ing when the shoe is going to drop. So that is a real­i­ty that some stu­dents live in

inclu­sion, you would say, like,

I would say a sol­id B like a pass­ing aver­age could be bet­ter. Yeah, it’ll be worth like, I, I think, the trans­gen­der Com­mu­ni­ty you could is like, a sol­id B and like, every­one’s gonna it’s a bev­er­age. So you, they’re gonna be stu­dents, they’re gonna be peo­ple and, you know, I include fac­ul­ty and staff because they’re a trans fac­ul­ty and turn stuff here at the Uni­ver­si­ty. Some of us have real­ly rough expe­ri­ences, depend­ing on where we sit in the insti­tu­tion or the majors were in or the cam­pus were on. And then some of us have a real­ly great expe­ri­ence as and that’s like where that we’re inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty comes in and that kind of depends on your

full make­up of iden­ti­ties. You know, I as a white professional.

I guess expe­ri­ence trans­pho­bia but I don’t expe­ri­ence it in some very overt ways because my white­ness pro­tects me in that way. So that’s why I put like a bee ish average.

Yeah. Well

Well, thank you for doing this. Thanks for com­ing on today and enlight­en­ing us.

With every­thing with your not bless­ing us with your knowledge.

So this has been Yukon jour­nal­ism report­ing. It was very nice to hear that. The trans Com­mu­ni­ty is doing b. Some­times you want to be aver­age, I mean, yeah, yeah, like it’s just decent decent. Now pass­ing and grad school. All right, well thank you. This has been, you can’t jour­nal­ism report­ing sign­ing out.”

Links Used: Trans­gen­der @ UConn: Resources and Poli­cies | Rain­bow Center

Trans­gen­der @ UConn: Quick Answers | Rain­bow Center

Meet the Staff | Rain­bow Center