CampusProgress.org | A Patchwork of Protections

Amid the battle to ensure marriage equality, it seems as though public policy affecting the LGBT community has left behind a large and important swath of the gay community: LGBT college students.

And yet these same young people, who are frequently so ambitious when tackling fights concerning their sexuality, often hardly consider their very basic needs as everyday university students. Unfortunately, federal higher education legislation ignores LGBT struggles with affording higher education.

While data focused on LGBT students remain unclear (data on sexual orientation and gender identity is not gathered in most research about college completion), considering America’s skyrocketing tuition costs, clearly any extra financial support for students is helpful. Nevertheless, current pending higher education bill, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), which currently remains on the back burner in favor of health care reform, would do little to address the higher education concerns of gay and lesbian students, faculty, and staff even with its immediate passage.

SAFRA is far from a terrible piece of legislation. In fact, the bill, which awaits introduction and debate in the Senate, would be the single largest investment in higher education since the GI Bill passed over five decades ago. It makes common sense reforms by expanding programs that work—like the federal Pell Grant—and redirecting spending from student loan companies to existing programs that do the same thing, but more cheaply and efficiently. [Note: For more information on the SAFRA legislation, see our related article .] Yet, even if SAFRA is enacted, there will be much work to do to protect the interests of LGBT students.

Transgender students can lose financial aid if their gender is not consistent with the reported gender in their financial aid forms, and other campus documents—a problem for students who haven’t gone through (or don’t want to) go through the required proceedings to legally change their gender. Shane Windmeyer, executive director of Campus Pride , is working alongside other LGBT groups to change the Common Application, which standardizes first-year college application forms for nearly 400 institutions, to make it more inclusive for transgender and gender non-conforming students. Campus Pride is encouraging a change that allows applicants to self-identify their gender in an inclusive manner.

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