OPINION
10 FOR PRESENTATION, 3 FOR EXECUTION BEING NON-BINARY AT TUFTS
O
ne of the first acknowledgments of gender nonconformity I experienced at Tufts was a question that popped up on my Tufts’ Student Information System page. It was simple: “What title should we address you as: Mr., Mrs., or Mx.?” As mundane as that might seem, to me, a queer kid from Missouri, it meant everything. I expected this would be the standard for all of Tufts’ interactions with gender-nonconforming students. Unfortunately, reality came up short. Tufts has the framework and resources to make non-binary individuals feel at ease, but the university priotizes words over taking action to achieve true inclusivity. Take the housing process, for example. When signing up, students are given the option to select gender-inclusive housing. Sounds great, right? Well, for me and a fellow enby— queer slang for someone who is non-binar y— checking this box did nothing to ensure we were placed in inclusive housing. In 2021, we
10 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 24, 2022
By Basil Hand
were both placed in Carmichael Hall’s “all-female” wing with no gender-neutral bathrooms. On top of us worrying about typical first-year issues, now we had to figure out what to do about housing that blatantly disregarded our needs. After a long game of email tag, the two of us finally ended up in Tilton Hall, where all the bathrooms are gender-neutral. The housing process, which claimed to be inclusive, failed my friend and me, and we had to rectify a mistake that shouldn’t have happened. In terms of gender-inclusive spaces, bathrooms force non-binary students to do more work than their cisgender classmates. Every time I enter a building, I have to figure out where the nearest gender-neutral bathroom is located. Some buildings make it easy with signs, but others make it exceedingly difficult. Some buildings have gender-neutral bathrooms tucked away behind walls, some have only one gender-neutral bathroom located floors away from where you need to be, and there isn’t a guarantee that the bathroom will be functioning properly. The issues don’t stop there; for students with physical disabilities, the spread out nature of these bathrooms can make them nearly impossible for a disabled non-binary individual to use. These problems illustrate a need for multiple clearly marked gender-neutral bathrooms in every building to ensure no undue stress is placed on non-binary students. The issues non-binary students face extend beyond architecture: there’s also archiTECHure, specifically the online identification process. Only one set of pro-
nouns at a time can be selected on SIS, and your username and email require outside help to change. All Tufts identification methods are based on your birth name, and students who identify as non-binary and go by a different preferred name are deadnamed upon acceptance into the Tufts system. The SIS pronoun markers only change how automated emails are addressed to you; every semester, I have to send a “fun” email to professors before class even starts telling them I use they/ them pronouns. These processes are difficult both practically and emotionally for non-binary students, and one potential fix to this could be informing professors of students’ pronouns automatically using an algorithm. While some effort is made to make student identification inclusive, the lack of depth in these systems leads to an environment far from inclusive. Outside of the Tufts administration, the inclusion of gender-nonconforming students in student organizations has been hit-or-miss. Some groups have integrated non-binary students well. A campus favorite, TFL, once stood for “Tufts Funny Ladies,” but rebranded in 2017 to be just TFL. The group advertises itself as “Tufts’ only gender minority comedy group,” and it follows through on this in spades. The e-board and membership consists of pronouns from all across the board, showing that rebranding from a women-only space to one inclusive of all gender minorities is possible. Some groups try, but ultimately come up short. One common example is student