Oh When Will They Ever Learn

This time it is a Rhode Island college that was in the process of creating guidelines for trans-athletes and because of pressure they are now backtracking.

Westerly School Committee tables controversial transgender proposal
Westerly Sun
Published: October 16, 2014
By Anna Maria Lemoine Sun Staff Writer

WESTERLY — The School Committee on Wednesday night tabled a proposed policy that would allow transgender students to use the bathroom and locker room of the gender with which they identify, and prohibit discrimination against transgender and nonconforming students.

But the action, which essentially halts the policy for now, did little to quell the dozens of residents who showed up to Town Hall chambers in opposition to the policy, with some calling it “absurd.”
[…]
According to the proposed policy, “with respect to all restrooms, locker rooms or changing facilities, students shall have access to facilities that correspond to their gender identity. Schools may maintain separate restroom, locker room or changing facilities for male and female students, provided that they allow students to access them based on their gender identity,” the policy states. And “under no circumstances” will students be required to use “sex-segregated facilities that are inconsistent with their gender identity,” the policy states.

Any student who is uncomfortable using a shared facility, regardless of the reason, can request an alternative such as the addition of a privacy partition or curtain, according to the policy. The policy, however, maintains that “requiring a transgender or gender nonconforming student to use a separate, nonintegrated space threatens to publicly identify and marginalize the student as transgender and should not be done unless requested by a student.”

Their proposed policy follows both Rhode Island state non-discrimination law and Title IX and by not addressing the problem they are opening up the school district to legal action.

Being uncomfortable is not a reason to discriminate.