LSU Students Rally for Trans Day of Visibility

Baton Rouge, LA – On Monday April 1, Louisiana State University students celebrated Trans Day of Visibility at the campus’s Parade Grounds to resist Louisiana’s transphobic legislation, as well as an anti-trans administrative policy.

Several anti-LGBTQ bills in Louisiana are awaiting hearing, such as the Trans Erasure Bathroom Bill (HB608), the Don’t Say Gay Bill (HB122), and the Name and Pronoun Regulation in Schools Bill (HB121). Reactionary legislators pushed similar bills just last year, but the governor ultimately vetoed them after facing pushback from the LGBTQ community. Many are worried these bills will see a different fate with Louisiana’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, who has been antagonistic to LGBTQ rights in the past.

A little over a week ago, LSU’s student government passed a bill to make on-campus housing more accessible to trans and gender-nonconforming students by helping LGBTQ students connect and room together.

The current process for trans students who are seeking on-campus housing forces them to find a roommate who will agree to live with them on their own, or you are forced to room with the incorrect gender. LSU claims that it acknowledges the correct genders for trans people who have changed their gender identity on official government identification documents. But the university stopped accepting Social Security Cards as proof of identity in the fall of 2022, when the Social Security Administration made it possible to self-select sex.

LSU students rallied against this oppression by chanting “When trans rights are under attack, stand up, fight back!” They played some games to symbolically resist the prejudice against trans people playing sports.

This rally was hosted by Louisiana Trans Advocates at LSU, Students for a Democratic Society at LSU, the Queer Trans Community Action Project (formerly Real Name Campaign), and Trans Queer Youth NOLA. Student organizers at LSU hope this event is just one of many to come.

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