YaleDailyNews.com – Cullen Macbeth – Staff Reporter
The Yale College Council approved a resolution Sunday night calling on the administration to include the terms “gender identity” and “gender expression” in the University’s official nondiscrimination policy.
Less than two weeks after Harvard University announced the addition of protection for “gender identity” — though not “gender expression” — to its own nondiscrimination policy, the YCC pushed for a similar action at Yale. Although some YCC members said they worried that the Yale resolution was not substantive enough to effect real change, supporters of the resolution — which passed, 13-3 — argue that it is needed to ensure that transgender members of the Yale community do not face harassment.
In 2004, Erin Emily Dwyer, a transsexual former Yale Dining Services employee, sued the University for discrimination, alleging harassment from coworkers and supervisors. Dwyer lost the case, but Hugh Baran ’09 — the coordinator of the Queer Political Action Committee, which is campaigning to add the clauses to the University’s nondiscrimination policy, said the revisions would prevent members of the Yale community from having to follow a similar path.