LGBTQ+ hate crime at USD brought calls for change
During Ezra Wheeler’s first semester at the University of San Diego, they were a target of a hate crime.
In the middle of the night on Oct. 24, 2019, someone vandalized Wheeler’s dorm room door, destroying their pride flags and writing transphobic and homophobic slurs.
Wheeler, who is trans and uses they/them pronouns, had just come out as queer and nonbinary on social media the day before.
In an interview this week, they recalled feeling like they wanted to withdraw from college. They said the crime and the experience of interacting with the University’s Department of Public Safety and the San Diego Police Department was difficult.
“It is easier to live in the closet,” they said, “but it is really awful to live in the closet and to live in a way where I’m tailoring my existence to other people’s expectations. I am just not interested in doing that. I had been doing that for 19 years at that point, and I just really needed to be who I was.
“I realized the perpetrator was trying to get power over me, trying to hold power over me and essen
tially just make me feel ashamed for who I am as a person. I felt that the only way that I could win in this case was to take back that power.”
San Diego police investigated it as a hate crime but no one was charged. Wheeler said that lack of accountability added to their trauma, and they felt the Department of Public Safety and San Diego police “dropped the ball.”
A USD representative confirmed in an email that its Department of Public Safety investigated and sent the matter to SDPD.
“Our public safety officers are committed to any and all investigations especially those that target any protected group in our community,” the email states, adding that USD participates in the Campus Pride Index, a national tool to assess support for LGBTQ+ students.
The Campus Pride Index rates USD as having three out of five stars when it comes to being LGBTQ friendly. By comparison San Diego State University has five stars and the University of California San Diego has four and half stars.
Wheeler said they felt more encouraged by the way USD students responded to the incident.
Students turned out for a well-attended vigil in support of the LGBTQ+ students, Wheeler said. And an ad hoc committee formed to go over USD policies pertaining to hate crimes or other acts of intolerance.
At the end of January, USD’s Associated Student Government passed a resolution that calls on the university to “create a more affirming campus for transgender, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming individuals.” Specifically, it says USD should normalize gender-affirming practices such as including pronouns, if it’s safe to do so, any place a person’s name is listed and facilitating the introduction of pronouns along with a person’s name at the beginning of class or at other meetings.
“It is really just about creating safer environments, particularly while we’re on Zoom,” Wheeler said.
The spokesperson wrote the university is “committed to creating an atmosphere of trust, safety and respect in an environment characterized by a rich diversity of people and ideas.” It disavows acts targeting race, gender identity, gender expression, sexuality “or any action that denigrates the human dignity of individuals.”
It’s great to see USD’s students and student government step up. Students at a private Roman Catholic university calling for this kind of change is powerful. Their work also provides important lessons we all should be mindful of, given the obstacles LGBTQ+ individuals face.
A 2015 U.S. Transgender survey of over 27,000 trans adults, found the majority of respondents who were out or perceived as transgender while in school reported experiencing mistreatment. About 54 percent reported being verbally harassed, 24 percent were physically attacked and 17 percent chose to leave school.
The report found 40 percent had attempted suicide and nearly a quarter had made suicide plans in the prior year.
A 2018 report from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law said up to 75 percent of trans students felt unsafe in high school and 50 percent were prevented from using their name or pronoun.
Wheeler said higher education institutions can create more welcoming environments by making support services available, uplifting safe community spaces, streamlining the process for changing names on forms and offering more inclusive gender language options — including embracing the use of pronouns in introductions.
Wheeler said when a person is misgendered or referred to incorrectly in class, they often end up having to focus on defending their very personhood instead focusing on education.
Those all seem like great recommendations. Advocacy groups such as the Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals and GLAAD also recommend developing and publicizing a trans-supportive housing policy, including “gender identity” in campus nondiscrimination policies, having gender inclusive bathrooms throughout campus and requiring staff to attend trans-focused ally training.
I get that these issues may be a bit foreign to some people. Personally these weren’t discussions in my Catholic K-12 schools, and these are areas I have to work on and become more knowledgeable about.
But we owe it to each other to educate ourselves and embrace many of these ideas. Even if it’s just starting with using proper pronouns.
“When you misgender a trans person it’s really really painful,” Wheeler said.
“It’s traumatic and something we have to deal with in our lives, but it shouldn’t be happening in the classroom or in the workplace or within families. Trans people are already at very high risk of suicide, self harm and violence .... So when you misgender someone it contributes to those statistics because, even if unintentional, the impact is still that you are not being recognized as who you are.”