Martin Luther King Jr. once described how our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. Yet time and time again, Northwestern and the individuals who work and study here have shown silence on trans and nonbinary students, as though we do not matter. The Tarana Burke event at Northwestern was just another instance of how NU treats its trans students as an afterthought, even as nonexistent.

Burke, an activist behind the #MeToo movement, spoke on campus as a part of the Martin Luther King Jr. events scheduled for this week. What most in the audience didn’t realize at the event was that when one of the sponsors — the 150 Years of Women campaign — was introduced, there was a failure to mention nonbinary students. This was an act of violence done against students who had worked so hard to expand the campaign, created to honor the first woman student, to include nonbinary students who also experience gender-based marginalization. And it directly contradicted the very message that Tarana Burke presented: that any #metoo movement needs to be inclusive of trans individuals.

Any celebration at Northwestern that aims to bring attention to the hardships and systemic barriers that women face due to their actual or perceived gender identity, should naturally extend to trans women and nonbinary individuals. A celebration without these people explicitly erases the narratives of oppression that they have faced at Northwestern for the past 150+ years. And even in her speech, Tarana Burke occasionally defaulted to gendered language when it came to talking about survivors of sexual violence, a pattern that occurs at Northwestern all too often. Contrary to the way Northwestern discusses sexual violence though, Tarana Burke intentionally included nonbinary narratives in her speech, discussing not only Jane Doe & John Doe, but a non-binary They Doe too. The messaging at Northwestern is clear — sexual harassment and violence is an issue that applies only to women. Nonbinary individuals should not and do not have a place at the table in that conversation at Northwestern.

The campus climate survey, a 2019 survey about sexual assault and misconduct at Northwestern, shows rates of violence against undergraduate students who identify as TGQN — trans men or women, genderqueer or nonbinary, questioning, or not listed — are actually the same as or higher than those for undergraduate women. Yet TGQN students remain an afterthought in our discussions of sexual violence on campus. The survey reported that rates of experiences of nonconsensual sexual contact for TGQN students were nearly identical to those for cisgender undergraduate women: 30.7 percent for the former and 30.8 percent for the latter.

The survey data is also skewed. Due to having too small of a sample size, it combines rates of nonconsensual sexual contact for graduate and undergraduate TGQN students, although rates of nonconsensual sexual contact for TGQN graduate students are significantly lower than those for undergraduate students. This statistic reflects that either TGQN graduate students experience sexual violence at significantly higher rates than cisgender graduate students, or TGQN undergraduate students experience sexual violence at significantly higher rates than cisgender undergraduate trans students, or some combination of the two.

The purpose of pointing this out is not to invalidate the experiences of female survivors of violence, but to argue that trans students should be included in the conversations as well. Rates of harassment for TGQN students were higher than those for women; 45.4 percent reported harassment as opposed to 34.4 percent of undergraduate women. It is not a surprise, then, that the report found that among TGQN students at Northwestern, only 13.9 percent reported feeling extremely connected to the campus community, as opposed to 38.3 percent of undergraduate women.

It’s important to note as well that surveys of this nature that have been conducted on larger populations similar to the Northwestern undergraduate community indicate that trans and gender nonconforming (TGNC) students of color experience nonconsensual sexual contact at rates that are significantly higher than their white TGNC peers. But, because the University could not even establish a baseline for undergraduate students, there is no data that allows for a specific comparison for undergraduate or graduate TGNC students of color at Northwestern. This prevents the institution from appropriately advocating for students who exist at the intersections of these identities.

We as a University are failing our trans and gender nonconforming students and survivors, yet we refuse to talk about it. In fact, although the University sponsored a genderqueer, nonbinary, and trans (GQNBT) Task Force last year, the results — although completed by September of 2020 — have yet to be released to the Northwestern community. That report was built on the backs of TGNC and queer students, faculty, and staff at Northwestern like myself. The words in that report would be a first step in starting the conversation on how to support these members of our community.

In her speech, Tarana Burke described how Northwestern is a community where everyone deserves protection and safety. This means that trans people at Northwestern deserve protection and safety. For that, we need to exist.

Right now, we are continually erased, mentioned as a footnote, the subject of a task force or one day in a quarter-long class. I’m someone who is not only a nonbinary survivor, but who has witnessed my trans and nonbinary friends and community experience discrimination, harassment, sexual violence, mental illness, medical leave of absence and trauma at astronomically high rates here at Northwestern. Even something so small as Northwestern refusing to include nonbinary people in the conversation at an event about sexual violence, like the Tarana Burke event, hurts.

Northwestern needs to take a moment to pause and spark a conversation about its nonbinary students that is not behind closed doors, obscured or omitted whenever convenient. Because until we start talking about our TGNC community members, we cannot talk about the ways TGNC students, faculty and staff experience sexual violence and how to stop it from happening in the future. Northwestern has been silent about us too long. It’s time for you to join me in asking for a change.

Adam Davies is a SESP senior. They can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.