Dartmouth lets students select chosen names
Valley News reported Dartmouth College has become the latest university to allow students to easily change their name or gender identity in directories, on identification cards and elsewhere across the Ivy League campus.
Transgender and nonbinary students have been able to request IDs and directory listings that reflect their preferred names for more than a decade, but the new policy announced September 11 allows them to log on to the college’s information system and make changes on their own. Chosen names also will be allowed to appear on transcripts and diplomas.
Campus Pride, a nonprofit organization that promotes LGBTQ-friendly learning environments, tracks such policies. It says most of the other seven Ivy League schools also provide students with a simple process to change their names or gender identities on university documents.
Weber State welcomes first openly gay student body president
The Standard-Examiner reported Weber State University’s first openly gay student body president said school is his safe place after overcoming a hard childhood.
Bret Alexander experienced homelessness and depression before he was recently elected as the northern Utah university’s student body president.
Alexander said he struggled with depression at a young age when his family was transient and under investigation by the Division of Child and Family Services.
Alexander left the house he shared with his mother and stepfather when he was 16 and moved in with an older cousin.
At Weber State, he found community in the student council and became actively involved in suicide prevention advocacy.
Alexander just begun his first year as a graduate student studying higher education leadership.
NYC Council looks to repeal gay conversion ban over lawsuit
The Washington Post reported New York City Council is looking to repeal a law banning gay conversion therapy over concerns that a pending lawsuit against it could lead to a decision unfavorable to the LGBTQ community if the case were to make it to the Supreme Court.
Council Speaker Corey Johnson on September 12 introduced the repeal against the ban. The council passed the ban in November 2017 and it took effect last year. It next goes to a committee hearing, scheduled for next week.
The Alliance Defending Freedom had filed a federal lawsuit against the ban in January, saying it violated free speech.
Senior Counsel Roger Brooks said if the repeal goes through, the organization would “commend the move.”
A state ban that applies only to minors would still be in effect.
Transgender woman killed, body burned in car
The Tampa Bay Times reported Florida sheriff’s deputies are investigating the slaying of a transgender woman whose body was found in her burning car.
Media reports said the Hendry County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the September 4 death of 23-year-old Bee Love Slater in Clewiston, Florida.
The Human Rights Campaign says Slater is at least the 18th transgender woman to be killed in 2019.
Capt. Susan Harrelle declined to tell the Palm Beach Post how Slater died, saying only the killer or a witness would know that.
She said detectives are investigating whether Slater’s gender identity was a motive for the slaying.
Slater’s friend Kenard Wade said that Slater had received threats the night she died and she wanted to leave the Lake Okeechobee area to avoid trouble.
Reporting via Associated Press