“Clark has a lot of really great allies to trans people, but the institution structurally is not supportive. Until our allies can help us make structural change, Clark cannot be claiming [that] it is a trans-friendly space,” said Pi Fong (’15), who argues that while members of the Clark community are inclusive of LGBTQ students, the University’s systems have a long way to go. Fong, a non-binary trans student, has advocated for trans students throughout their time at Clark, and while some progress has been made, they still have an extensive list of proposed changes.
“I think we’ve worked hard to make Clark a good place for [trans students],” said Denise Darrigrand, Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students, who has worked with LGBTQ students throughout her tenure at Clark, “and I want that to continue to happen, and it’s just incredibly important that we be challenged to look at those issues, to make sure that we’re staying current, and to make sure that these things are matters of fact as opposed to being special exceptions.”

Preferred Names and Pronouns
For most students, the first day of classes is routine, if not a little annoying. The professor reads roll, then goes over the syllabus, then maybe gets into teaching if there’s time. For other students, like Khalil Power (’18), a genderqueer student, the first day is “really scary and really intimidating.”
Although Clark students can use names other than their legal names on Moodle and email, only legal names appear on class rosters. For transgender students, who have chosen to use preferred names, the first day of class means becoming associated with a name with which they do not identify.
“I remember vividly skipping all of my first classes because I didn’t want people to hear my birth name and associate it with me or [I would] try to talk to the professor before,” Power said. “I dreaded correcting the professor.”
Fong explained that Power’s experience is not unique. “Preferred names affect a lot of demographics, not just trans students, but it’s a particular issue for trans students, because they end up getting outed as trans in their classroom spaces and that can be really damaging and potentially dangerous for students, especially if they’re not open about their trans status.”
Darrigrand said that “for a long time, students have been concerned with names and pronouns, and we’ve done all that we can do to help faculty to be more sensitive to that.” She suggested to faculty to send out index cards on the first day of class where students can write down preferred names and pronouns, “so that it doesn’t become about one person in the class.”
“The thing about names that’s on the one hand beautiful, and on one hand petrifying, is that they’re seen to be so symbolic of who you are. That’s why specifically names are such a big deal… they’re used all the time, but they also seem symbolic of who you are,” Power said.
The ability to use a preferred first name (and mark a preferred pronoun within Clark’s registration system) is a work in progress. Registrar Rebecca Hunter referred to the inability to use preferred names as her “biggest frustration at Clark.” She said that, in addition to transgender students, international students, married professors, students with remarried or recently married parents, and other populations are also maligned by the university’s framework for handling preferred names.
Hunter explained that students can use preferred names when applying to Clark, but “the first day the student gets here for orientation, it cuts off,” and the school goes back to using their legal name. Banner, the university’s student information system, has fields for first, middle, last, and preferred first names, but the preferred first name does not get connected to any of the university’s other systems. Hunter said that filling in a preferred first name “does almost nothing.”
Clark’s first option is to take the University of Vermont’s approach and create a customized patch for Banner, which would be a significant monetary investment. Hunter noted, though, that at a recent conference for Banner, the most-requested update to the system was for preferred names. Ellucian, the company which runs Banner, is planning to release a new program called XE in the near future, which may also contain updated preferred name infrastructure.
“The common theme when I talk to IT is that we have limited resources,” Hunter said. “This is an imperative. If we call a student a certain name during the admissions process, then we better call them that when we get here.”
“The fact that this project has sort of been on the IT project list for [so long] without any movement on it shows that trans issues are not a priority for the university,” Fong said.

Housing
Preferred names are only one element of the University which trans students consider non-inclusive. Power called the gender-neutral housing policy “infuriating” in that first-years and sophomores are required to live in housing, which is not necessarily accommodating for non-binary students.
“Especially for people who have really bad dysphoria, and really don’t want anyone to see them without a binder on or without a bra or without… a packer,” they said. “What does that mean if you’re living with someone and you’re changing and they walk in? For some people it’s not a big deal. For some people it’s a really big deal.”
Power hopes that the University will choose to allow transgender students to live in single rooms for the same price of a double room (as is the practice at Oberlin College), allow transgender students to live off-campus without the typically-applied $1,000 fee, or allow transgender students to live together.
Gender neutral housing is more accessible to sophomores than it is to first-years. When the University chose to permit gender-neutral housing in the early 2000s, Darrigrand “felt, developmentally, college from high school was a big enough transition that, to have to live in gender neutral housing would be too much.” Dean Darrigrand said that gender neutral housing for first-years is “something we’d be open to, it’s a question of what direction we take. Right now what happens is that if someone identifies as trans on their housing form, I would get in touch personally with them over the summer and say ‘What do you want to do about housing? Where are you comfortable living?’”

Moving Forward
Creating the kind of structural change needed requires allies, and there is some worry that Dean Darrigrand’s departure might mean a decrease in LGBTQ advocacy at Clark. “Most of the positive trans-friendly changes at Clark have been a direct result of her support and commitment to the community. The community is absolutely concerned about continuing to make change without Dean Darrigrand because she has been so effective in the past and there is no guarantee that the new dean of students will prioritize the LGBTQ community in the same ways she has. Denise leaving will certainly affect how LGBTQ students experience Clark but as a community we have a lot of momentum and hope to continue it through to the next dean of students,” said Fong.
In discussing her departure, Darrigrand said that “I want the conversation to continue… I went through and looked at all the things that Clark has done in the past number of years, and it’s sort of an impressive list, to be honest, but that doesn’t mean that we still don’t have a ways to go. It doesn’t mean that we still have to keep that in our consciousness.”