My Alma Mater

My under graduate degree is from Rochester Institute of Technology and RIT is in the news for all the wrong reasons including not providing healthcare for trans people.

RIT students protest for access to transgender health care services on campus
Democrat & Chronicle
By Justin Murphy
April 2, 2018

Rochester Institute of Technology students Monday protested over insufficient health care resources for transgender students, particularly access to hormone replacement therapy on campus.

Transgender RIT students did receive hormone replacement therapy (HRT) at the on-campus student health center until last spring, when Dr. Annamaria Kontor, who monitored it, was abruptly fired for doing so. The school said she had exceeded her authority as a primary care physician; Kontor said providing primary care was exactly what she was doing.

Kontor filed a complaint with the state Division of Human Rights, which ruled in December that the university likely had engaged in discrimination in firing her.

In this case they didn’t fire a trans person but they fired the doctor who was helping trans people. I like the solid conclusion that the Human Rights division issued, “likely had engaged in discrimination” now there is a definitive ruling.

So what are the students doing in the meantime while they get their healthcare covered?

 In the meantime, the handful of students on campus seeking HRT must go either to Trillium Health or the University of Rochester Medical Center, both of which have long waiting lists and can be difficult to reach for students without vehicles.

The protest, organized by the student organization OUTspoken, also complained about the policy on gender-neutral bathrooms on campus and the need to make information for LGBTQ students more visible and easily accessible.

"The university at the beginning was really receptive to meetings and seeing what's going on," OUTspoken President Taryn Brennan said. "But sometimes things stall. ... Students are tired of waiting and feeling kind of invisible, especially on a campus with such a large queer presence."

The school’s response…

Rosen said in a statement: "RIT is a welcoming and inclusive community and we take the health and well-being of all our students very seriously. We work daily to provide excellent care and services to our students, and they can expect the Student Health Center staff to be sensitive and responsive to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex and asexual students’ medical issues.  We want (those students) to know that we see and hear them and are open to hearing their thoughts, feelings and perspectives."

Yeah, right. If they really want to be responsive give them health insurance coverage.

I tell you one thing that most definitely helps is pass a law banning discrimination against us instead of a governor’s executive order; we have seen how easy executive orders can be reversed.