XPost: oh.general, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, sac.politics
XPost: alt.society.liberalism, alt.transgendered

For some famously progressive colleges in Ohio, a new state law designed
to keep transgender women from using women’s restrooms at schools is
bringing a moment of soul-searching for students, alumni and
administrators.

It’s one of many such laws adopted around the country, with the stated
intent of protecting female students. The Ohio law — which applies fully
to private colleges, unlike the others — allows individual institutions to decide how they will obey and enforce the measure.

But navigating the law has become a challenge, especially at colleges like Antioch and Oberlin, campuses built on a bedrock of idealism and protest
where many see the law as part of a wider attack on transgender students.

For some, the idea of complying at all runs counter to the long-held value
of being gender-inclusive. At the same time, colleges across the country
are sorting the impact of the Trump administration's crackdown on
diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, including a threat to cut
federal funding for schools that reject its interpretation of civil rights laws.

Oberlin has published policies saying the school will comply with the law taking effecting Tuesday and is offering counseling and a chance for
students to ask to move out of their dorms. Antioch has not announced a detailed plan.

Ahri Morales-Yoon, a first-year student at Antioch College who is
nonbinary, said the law’s impact will go beyond bathroom access.

“It will cause a lot of fear and uncertainty,” they said. “It’s in the
back of your head that this law is hanging over us.”

Jane Fernandes has been president of Antioch College since 2021. In that
time, she said, she hasn’t fielded a single complaint about anyone’s
presence in a restroom.

The school, about an hour's drive west of Columbus, was founded in 1850.
Horace Mann, the education reformer, abolitionist and former member of
Congress became its first president. The school shuttered in 2008 amid financial struggles but relaunched three years later. Nearly 90% of the school's 120 students identify as LGBTQ+ and about 1 in 6 say they are transgender.

“We will do everything we can to make it possible for transgender students
to be very supported and safe here,” said Fernandes, who has spoken out repeatedly against the law.

Shelby Chestnut, the executive director of the Transgender Law Center, who
is an Antioch graduate and chair of the school’s board of trustees, said
the law is an effort to deter colleges from supporting students.

“This is an outright attack on student safety,” they said in an interview.

The law calls for colleges in Ohio to designate all multioccupancy
restrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms and showers for the exclusive use
of males or females, based on sex at birth.

Ten other states already enforce bathroom laws. But none of those apply
broadly at private colleges and universities.

“The point was that we're treating our students equally across the board
in Ohio," said Republican state Rep. Beth Lear, one of the measure’s
sponsors.

The bathroom laws are part of a wave of anti-transgender policies. Most GOP-controlled states, including Ohio, have banned gender-affirming
medical care for transgender minors and passed laws to keep transgender
women from competing in women's sports.

Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has signed a series of executive orders targeting transgender and nonbinary people on several
fronts, an abrupt change from President Joe Biden's efforts to include
them explicitly in civil rights protections.

Since its founding in 1833, Oberlin College and Conservatory, outside Cleveland, has broken down social barriers, including being among the
first colleges to admit women and Black students. The college was on the
cover of Life magazine in 1970 when it offered co-ed dorms.

By the 1990s, dorm residents were voting on bathroom policies, and they
often made facilities open to any gender.

The bathroom law has sparked angst on campus and among some alumni, who
see the administration's intention to comply with the law as an abdication
of values by the school of nearly 3,000 students. The college said in a campus-wide note that following the law “does not diminish our support for every member of our diverse community.”

But it's not that simple to everyone.

It goes against “the whole idea of Oberlin,” English professor DeSales
Harrison said, “to refrain from making a decisive argument about what
seems true and good in the world.”

Some have called for Oberlin to take a more forceful stand.

Kathryn Troup Denney, who graduated in 1995, is a Massachusetts-based
musical theatre director who wrote a production about transgender people.
Like several alumni on message boards, she said her alma mater should not comply with the state law, even if it means risking government funding.

“When the law is deliberately causing discriminating against one
particular population of people,” Denney said, “that’s when good people
can rise up and say, ‘No, this law is not fair, it is not equitable, and
it is not safe.’”

Oberlin officials declined interview requests.

When students returned to Oberlin for the spring semester, there were new
signs designating multi-person bathrooms as being for either men or women.

Many dorm bathrooms previously had signs designating them as open to
everyone, people of just one gender or just one occupant. Students could
change the signs. In academic and other buildings, instead of designating
a gender, some signs described whether a bathroom had stalls or urinals.

Some of the new signs have been removed, apparently as acts of protests,
and the administration has been replacing them.

But at both Antioch and Oberlin, it's not clear that who uses which
restroom will change.

Natalie DuFour, Oberlin's student body president, noted the law does not require anyone to check who is using the bathrooms.

“Students, in theory, have the freedom to use whatever they want," she
said.

Antioch's Fernandes has signaled the same thing: “We’re not going to
monitor who’s going in which bathroom."

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/ohio-bathroom-law-targeting- transgender-students-brought-internal-119092098

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