During World War II, Tracey Tsugawa’s parents and grandparents were incarcerated in U.S. internment camps, and it caused a streak of strong political consciousness in her family.

Now, Tsugawa will bring that sense of social justice to the University of Oregon as the new Director of the Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity.

Tsugawa has an extensive resume with experience in education and civil rights. This includes 15 years as a civil rights investigator, consulting for various community-based organizations and instructing at the undergraduate and graduate level. She credits her mother for the inspiration to get into this line of work.

“She was a force of nature… She had a very strong political and social consciousness that I heard about from day one as a child,” Tsugawa said. “It was because of her that I started asking questions about why the world is the way it is.”

Tracey Tsugawa was hired as the new director of the Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity at the University of Oregon.

Tsugawa is finishing her job as Title IX Officer at UC Santa Cruz. She will start remotely at the AAEO office on Oct. 1 and is expected to arrive on campus by mid-October.

Throughout high school and while studying at Oberlin College in Ohio, Tsugawa questioned the way things were in the world and thought about what she could do to change them.

“By the time I graduated, I had settled on education as a means for social change,” Tsugawa said. “That really sort of set me on the path…I fell in love with teaching.”

Tsugawa got into higher education but also focused on community-based education. This led her to the variety of work exhibited on her resume.

“It’s much more than a job. I feel like it’s a calling for me,” Tsugawa said. “I feel a responsibility to make the world a better place for everyone.”

Tsugawa is excited about the opportunities she will have at UO and new challenges she will face.

“[I want to] make sure that we have a campus that is as free as possible from forms of harassment and discrimination, and cultivate a campus that is truly inclusive and welcoming for everyone…” Tsugawa said. “I’m totally excited about coming to Oregon – totally excited about becoming a Duck.”

Tsugawa mentioned two overarching goals for the AAEO office. One is providing prevention education and training for office staff on how to address interpersonal conflict. The other is making processes more transparent so people know what their options are. She also emphasized the importance of protecting people instead of the university.

“Our job is to protect the students, staff and faculty of the campus, not to protect the university…We need to be independent and autonomous to a degree so that we can protect people.”

Tsugawa is excited for the prospects of her new job, including the possibility of being able to teach again, something that was not an option at UC Santa Cruz.

“I would love to get back in the classroom and teach environmental justice if possible,” Tsugawa said. “But my primary responsibility coming in this fall is to work on developing the office, so I can’t imagine that I will have time to consider teaching during my first year. But if that ever becomes a possibility at the University of Oregon, I would love to get back into the classroom.”

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From Aug. 28 through Sept. 5, the University of Oregon Student Recreation Center is closed for annual maintenance.

Although the close is a minor inconvenience for summer UO students and community members, it is an important aspect of maintaining a high quality rec center. This has become more difficult to manage in such a short amount of time due to the 2015 expansion, says associate director for facilities and operations Tiffany Lundy.

According Lundy, the maintenance is mostly deep cleaning and rotation of the equipment, which gives the equipment a longer life span.

“Some older equipment from the late 90s will get rotated out and some new equipment will get rotated in,” Lundy said.

The maintenance includes dusting, window washing, cleaning and resealing all the floors and repairing equipment. In addition, the outdoor tennis courts and track are being resurfaced.

“For us, it’s really about that safety and quality care,” Lundy said of the maintenance.

The SRC maintenance will also include changing out the lightbulbs with LED bulbs to be more energy-efficient.

Lundy doesn’t expect students returning to the rec center after maintenance to notice much of the work.

“Unfortunately it’s a lot of things people wouldn’t notice, or they would only notice if it’s not done well,” Lundy said, “but it’s all those things that have to be done to add to the life and quality of the experience … It’s about taking really good care of the students’ investment.”

Some outside contractors were hired for the more complex and specialty jobs, such as resealing the floors, but the other tasks, especially cleaning, were taken on by the rec center’s student workers, Lundy said.

“We have a group of students that work with our maintenance staff that are called ‘rec techs’ and they do so much work. They deserve total recognition for the incredible skills they have,” Lundy said.

The SRC will reopen prior to the start of fall term on Sept. 6.

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Veteran Robert Wilson and his dog Chica sit on the corner of E 8th Ave and Oak St during the Eugene Saturday Market. (Phillip Quinn/Emerald)

Robert Wilson, sitting at a park block corner on Saturday afternoon, gave off a sunny demeanor to passersby. Saturday Market goers were drawn to him by his chihuahua Chica, perched next to him in a cowboy costume.

Wilson had been homeless for 25 years, three in Eugene, before finding military veteran designated housing. Before he was safely housed, he was one of the many who frequented downtown, relying on the steady flow of people and sweet demeanor of his dog to earn enough money to eat. But this practice was put in jeopardy when the dog ban went into effect in April.

The ban, approved by the city council, exempts licensed dogs owned by people who live and work in the downtown area and dogs that are left in vehicles. It was originally one of four proposals suggested to increase safety in downtown Eugene, which were voted on in November 2016. The other proposals discussed included a ban on smoking, the installation of downtown security cameras and a temporary closure of the Park Block shelters. The proposal to install security cameras was rejected in November, but further discussion of the other three proposals passed. As of August, only the dog ban has been implemented.

Homeless individuals reside all over Eugene, some in temporary housing such as Community Supported Shelters and some out in the open. In downtown Eugene, the blocks around Kesey Square are frequently filled with homeless people. They sit on the sidewalks, busking for money, and are often accompanied by a dog. This has been the case for years, but the homeless population is growing, and they are finding fewer sympathetic places to go.

“There’s lots of gradations of homelessness, and what we see downtown… [Mayor] Kitty Piercy used the word ‘travelers,’ street kids,” said Eric de Buhr, executive director of the Community Supported Shelters.

Wilson concurs, saying that some of the downtown homeless are merely passing through and give Eugene’s homeless a bad reputation, getting drunk in public and leaving trash everywhere.

Former council member George Brown agrees that some of downtown’s homeless create a safety concern.

“There were problems with dogs who attacked and killed another dog,” Brown said. “Very rarely have dogs attacked a human, [but] that’s happened too.”

Since the ban has gone into effect, there have been mixed opinions on its success.

“Anecdotally, we’re hearing from both sectors,” Councilor Greg Evans said. “There are people who are saying that the dog ban has made a difference in downtown. There are other people who feel that it really hasn’t made a difference.”

“I think it’s stupid,” Councilor Betty Taylor said, arguing that many people have dogs as companions, and that shouldn’t bar them from going into certain parts of town.

Brown agreed.

“There’s so many different groups of people that come downtown,” he said. “People who work there, people who patronize the businesses there, coming down for the restaurants. Then there’s homeless people, and then there’s travelers, and they all have to use this space and not step on each others’ toes.”

“I felt that to deprive a homeless person of their dog — for a lot of these folks, that’s their only friend in the world. And dogs provide security… I thought there has to be a different way,” he added.

Beyond their opinions about the dog ban, both Brown and Taylor agree that the proposed safety plans criminalize the homeless.

“The whole purpose of it is to exclude those [homeless] people,” Taylor said, even though councilors who voted for the proposals denied that intent.

“We’ve had this discussion in council a couple of years ago… with the city attorney – ‘No, no! The city of Eugene doesn’t criminalize homelessness!’ But we do,” Brown said. “Do I think there’s a big campaign to criminalize homelessness? No, I don’t think that there is. I think that this was inadvertent and they just don’t see it.”

According to Brown, the homeless are cited, can’t pay the citations and can’t or won’t go to court. The city can either choose to go after them and jail them, using up taxpayer dollars, or leave them. Some homeless people owe hundreds of dollars in citations, Brown estimates.

Wilson has not been cited for having his chihuahua Chica with him while downtown but has been asked to vacate the area before.

“They came along with the dog ban and told me I was no longer welcome downtown,” Wilson said. “People are not allowed to discriminate against race and gender, but they sure can [against] homeless people.”

Although Wilson is no longer without housing, he still relies on busking at the Saturday Market and downtown to make a living. The dog ban makes this difficult for him.

“To me, it’s a civil rights issue and a disability issue,” Wilson said. “It really hurts to be discriminated against.”

Councilor Greg Evans disagrees that the dog ban affects Eugene’s homeless.

“We want to be very careful not to criminalize the situation of the homeless,” Evans said. He claimed that there is a difference between Eugene’s homeless and those who made inappropriate use of the downtown area.

According to both councilor Evans and Brown, increased police presence has been said to improve crime rates in downtown Eugene, but neither this nor the dog ban are permanent solutions. These actions may drive the homeless out of the downtown area temporarily, but they will still be without permanent shelter and in need of assistance.

Taylor said the answer is to provide housing downtown so that homeless who frequent that area have a place to go during the day and stay at night. A budget of $1 million has been approved and allocated for providing housing to those without a permanent residence, Taylor said, although she’s unsure when action will be taken and what’s to come of it.

According to Taylor, the Eugene City Council does not do much to support or assist the homeless population beyond the provision of land. Temporary housing such as the Community Supported Shelters are volunteer-based, and the homeless are otherwise left to their own devices.

In January 2017, Lane County Human Services conducted its annual Point-in-Time homeless count and found that there were 1,529 homeless people in Eugene alone. This survey did not include 741 people who were formerly homeless but now reside in permanent housing established specifically for the homeless community. Although this is only approximately 0.9 percent of Eugene’s 156,185 people, this proportion is higher than that of New York City, where only 0.7 percent of the city’s 8,175,133 individuals are homeless.

Eugene’s homeless are not going anywhere, with a 5 percent increase from the 2016 PIT count. Citing and jailing them for such things as sleeping on benches is not effective and a waste of taxpayer money, Brown said.

There doesn’t appear to be any easy solutions for the issues in downtown.

“I don’t think there is any one magic bullet,” Brown said.

The post Eugene’s downtown dog ban: does it criminalize the homeless? appeared first on Emerald Media.

As the majority of students leave campus, heading home for the summer, others filter in. They are incoming freshmen, transfer students and their families, occupying the dorms, university buildings and nearby hotels. They’ve come to Eugene for the University of Oregon’s student orientation, referred to as IntroDUCKtion.

According to the University of Oregon website, IntroDUCKtion is designed to inform new students about academic requirements and opportunities, including having them meet with an academic advisor and register for their first term of classes. The orientation also allows students and their families to familiarize themselves with extracurricular activities.The university requires  incoming freshmen to stay overnight in a dorm which helps them acclimate to life on campus.

IntroDUCKtion differs from the Week of Welcome in the sense that it is more about educating the incoming students about the nuts and bolts of the school, says SOSer Mathieu Wilson.

“IntroDUCKtion is [the freshmen] getting registered for classes, to learn about how to go through surviving. They learn kind of the basics of what campus has to offer as far as safety. They learn about personal safety, they learn about community respect, things like that. Week of Welcome is more fun-focused activities.”

Incoming freshmen feel that IntroDUCKtion helped calm their nerves about coming to college and provided useful information.

“I knew in theory that other people would be nervous, but when I actually got there and saw that other people were also awkward and nervous, it made me feel a lot better,” said incoming freshman Ryan Nguyen.

Transfer students have the option to attend a less rigorous one-day session, which does not require an overnight stay. In this session, there are fewer events and activities provided to allow students to socialize and familiarize themselves with the campus. Instead, the focus is primarily logistical — registering for classes, academic advising and general student information. If transfer students wish to have a more complete orientation experience, they are allowed to register for a two-day session.

Wilson also discussed how IntroDUCKtion evolves over the series of nine summer sessions.

“One thing that I do appreciate about the program is that it is changing pretty constantly. Year-to-year it changes, but session to session it changes… our bosses are very receptive to [staff suggestions].”

This mandatory student orientation, a precursor to the annual fall Week of Welcome, costs $280 for the two-day sessions. This price covers the cost of the overnight stay, some meals, staff and program costs and includes one family member, who attends a separate parent and family program. If other family members wish to attend any IntroDUCKtion sessions, they must pay an additional $95. The price for one-day sessions is less lofty at $195, but includes no overnight stay and “some meals.”

According to incoming freshman Katie Schmidt, students were provided with lunch and dinner on the first of the two days.

“It made me feel a lot more at home on campus,” said Miles Hurd, another incoming freshman. “The advisor really helped me realize what I could do with choosing different classes for different things I have to fulfill to get my degree.”

On a scale of one to ten, ten being completely panicked about college and one being totally ready, each of these students’ ratings dropped 4-5 points after attending IntroDUCKtion.

“It was a good immersive experience, a little sneak peak into what life would like at U of O,” said Nguyen.

Schmidt felt the same way.

“I had a lot of excitement coming in and it blew me away. I had an absolute blast.”

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At 6 p.m. on Wednesday, August 9, every table at Falling Sky Brewery in the EMU was filled. Students, faculty and members of the Eugene community came to hear a lecture by Scott Fisher, the Physics department Director of Undergraduate Studies.

An alumnus of the University of Florida with a Bachelor of science and a Ph.D., Fisher is a professional astronomer, researcher and outreach specialist. He has received over $40 million in federal grants over 3 years while working at the National Science Foundation.

The lecture was a typical classroom-style setup with projector slides, despite the fact that it was hosted in a brewery. Fisher started by providing background information on the planets and their relative sizes. He then dove into detail about the sun.

Fisher explained the relative size of the sun which is approximately 333,000 times the size of the Earth. He also discussed how the sun gives off energy via nuclear fusion — small nuclei bonding together. This is why the sun is 5800 Kelvin – nuclear fusion can only occur in extreme conditions.

At the end of the lecture, Fisher provided more details about the upcoming eclipse.

“It is literally a two-minute night,” Fisher said.

According to Fisher, the eclipse will begin at approximately 8:30 am and last about three hours. The two-minute night Fisher mentioned is when the moon will cover the majority of the sun, at about 10:15 am.

The best place to view the eclipse will be in the belt of totality — the region where the moon will completely cover the sun. In Oregon, this region includes Corvallis and Salem.

Fisher recommended viewing the eclipse from within the belt of totality, but said that if you hadn’t made plans already, it was probably too late.

The solar eclipse will occur the morning of Monday, August 21.

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Relationships can be difficult to navigate, full of ups and downs. Sometimes you want to spend lots of time with your partner, and sometimes you just need some time alone. These are all normal aspects of a relationship.

But what happens when the relationship changes? When the behavior of your partner starts to enter dangerous territory? Sure, people change, but there are limits as to what is a normal disagreement or healthy behavior. When those limits are crossed, the relationship can become unhealthy. Here are a few ways to tell if your relationship has become unhealthy, or even abusive.

1. Your partner controls your time. Sure, when we were kids, our parents were pretty stingy about where we could go out, who we could go out with and how long we could stay out. But once you hit adulthood, it’s not your parents’ job to control your time, and it isn’t your partner’s either. It’s natural to want to spend time with your partner, but if they are trying to take up all of it, that’s a bad sign. They should not be able to dictate who you hang out with and for how long – your time is your own, and they should be respectful of that.

2. Your partner is unreasonably jealous. A little jealousy is perfectly natural in any relationship. However, it’s easy for a little jealousy to turn into a lot. This makes it easy for your partner to make anything a big deal, even if it’s as simple as spending a few hours with one of your friends, or posting a picture on Instagram with someone besides your partner. Don’t let your partner’s jealousy guilt you into not hanging out with other people.

3. Your partner controls your social media. Social media are prevalent forms of self-expression. Everyone uses it in different ways, whether it’s to communicate thoughts, display art or keep in touch with friends. An abusive partner might seek to control what you post, getting upset if certain people like your photos or if you don’t post enough about them.

4. Your partner misinterprets everything you say. You said, “I’d like to have alone time tonight to get some homework done” and they turned it into “You don’t love me anymore and never want to spend time with me or see me ever again.” You said, “I’m going to hang out with a friend tonight” and they heard “I’m going to go cheat on you.” This is not a normal or healthy aspect of a relationship. If they can’t trust you to mean what you say and twist everything around, they are being emotionally abusive.

5. Your partner doesn’t communicate with you. When you were a kid, giving the silent treatment might have been your favorite way to show somebody you were mad. But we all know that’s not a good way to resolve a problem. If your partner drops off the face of the planet whenever you get into an argument, every situation can be blown out of proportion. Worse still is if you don’t know that your partner is upset with you. The best way to maintain a healthy relationship is through open and honest communication.

6. Your partner gaslights you. Gaslighting is unfortunately a fairly prevalent form of emotional abuse, in which the victim is tricked into questioning their own perceptions and memories of a situation. It is a common tool of an emotional abuser, used to manipulate you into thinking that their perception is the “right” one and you’re just remembering the situation wrong.

7. Your partner blames you for anything that goes wrong. Tied to gaslighting, an emotionally abusive partner might blame you for anything that isn’t perfect in the relationship, even if it has nothing to do with you. Your partner might make you feel guilty in order to control your actions more easily, and use gaslighting as a tool to do so.

8. “If you leave me, I’ll hurt/kill myself.” This is one of the most manipulative tricks in the book. Maybe you’ve realized your relationship is unhealthy or abusive and you are getting ready to break it off. Nothing will stop you in your tracks like hearing your partner say something like this. It makes it so that if you leave, and something happens, it seems like your fault. But it’s not. This is probably the biggest red flag I can think of, and a heavy indicator that your partner is emotionally abusive.

These are just some of the many ways that your partner can abuse or manipulate you. If you recognize any of these things happening in your relationship, I would encourage you to get some advice and think seriously about whether or not the relationship is worth it.

The post Marks: Eight signs you’re in an abusive relationship appeared first on Emerald Media.

Today, social media is a significant form of communication. Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr, people spend hours a day building their social media presence. Some choose to protect their personal lives with privacy settings, while others don’t mind lending their every thought to the general public’s ear.

People are entitled to put whatever they want on social media, but choosing what to post becomes more of an issue when you’re in the public eye. More specifically, politicians must be conscious of how they express support and receive critique.

One example of this is Donald Trump, who has slammed us with an onslaught of rude tweets since before he was elected. A notable instance is when Trump denounced the New York Times, NBC News, ABC, CBS and CNN as the “enemy of the American people.” He is entitled to his opinion, but the critiques seems to stem less from the news sources’ actual credibility and more from the fact that they are critical of Trump’s politics. Furthermore, his complaint didn’t specify what about these news sites made them devoid of credibility. It appears as though Trump saw news that wasn’t supportive of his campaign and decided that the sources were no longer credible, since they didn’t agree with him.

This sort of behavior leads me (and I’m sure many others) to further question Trump’s ability to conduct himself in a mature and professional fashion. But Trump’s social media presence isn’t the only one we need to be aware of. Political social media presence is relevant on the University of Oregon campus, in regards to ASUO student government.

After the Emerald Editorial Board ran a piece in which they critiqued the one-slate ASUO campaign, there was some backlash. As with any column (coming from someone who works on the opinion desk) criticism and contrary opinions are expected. However, one of the people criticizing the editorial was a member of the slate: Vickie Gimm, at the time running for external vice president.

As more articles about the ASUO election came out, Gimm’s online comments became increasingly aggressive and laced with expletives. These comments were shocking and I knew I wouldn’t be the only one to be critical of them. I wondered if she was merely responding to critique in an irrational and over-the-top way, and was normally much more professional. However, an investigation of her Facebook led me to the post announcing that she was running for ASUO, which revealed that her aggressive manner was not an isolated incident.

In an interview for this column, Gimm emphasized her disdain for respectability politics.

“Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t abide by respectability politics. That is something I don’t participate in,” Gimm said. She went on to clarify that “respectability politics is the behaviors that go into determining how polite to be to someone, just based on a position they have or power they have.”

Gimm clearly doesn’t care about peoples’ perceptions of her social media accounts. She was furthermore unconcerned about how this might affect her political reputation.

“Political figures do to some extent represent the institution but what I post on my personal social media, regardless of my privacy settings, has nothing to do with how I operate as somebody who is fiscally responsible, somebody who supports students and somebody who wants to enact great change on this campus,” Gimm said.

Fellow slate member and ASUO president-elect Amy Schenk didn’t endorse Gimm’s behavior, but didn’t seem to want to get involved, either.

“It is a concern,” Schenk said. “But again, it’s her words, not mine.”

Schenk said she would talk to Gimm if Schenk perceives it as an issue.

“If something made me uncomfortable, I’ll bring it to her attention and we’ll talk about it.”

But at the moment, Schenk said, she doesn’t see it as much of a problem.

Although Gimm is unconcerned about her social media presence, the way she presents herself could have significant consequences. Gimm has an influence on how ASUO is viewed by not only current students but administration, prospective students, parents and other institutions. She could compromise how administration perceives and chooses to interact with ASUO. And what happens if this goes beyond social media? If her behavior extends beyond the confines of Facebook and her unprofessional manner becomes something that those who work with her have to deal with in person?

Ultimately it is up to Gimm to decide how to present herself on social media. But as someone who has gained visibility in the public eye and is therefore more subject to critique, she has to learn how to take it gracefully. Otherwise, her unprofessional presence may do more harm than good.

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On March 30, the infamous HB2, commonly referred to as North Carolina’s bathroom bill, was repealed. Initially, I was excited to hear the news. With HB2 gone, transgender people would theoretically be able to use whichever restroom they were most comfortable in.

My excitement was short lived. Scrolling through twitter, the headlines had shifted from celebratory to suspicious. Clickbait titles claimed that the repeal of HB2 was not a victory, but instead a new problem for the transgender community to surmount.

At this point, you are probably as confused as I was. Why would the removal of a bill which prevents transgender people from using the bathrooms they are most comfortable in be seen as a negative thing? It should be liberating to have this oppressive rule lifted.

The answer to that is HB142. In wording, it seems fairly simple and straightforward:

“State agencies, boards, offices, departments, institutions, branches of government, including The University of North Carolina and the North Carolina  Community College System, and political subdivisions of the State, including local  boards of education, are preempted from regulation of access to multiple occupancy restrooms, showers, or changing facilities, except in accordance with an act of the General Assembly.”

At face value, it’s innocent – the entities listed do not have the power to regulate public bathrooms or changing rooms. Its implications, however, are much more serious.

Governor Roy Cooper campaigned on a repeal of the bathroom bill, but his replacement bill has been seen as worse for the transgender community. (Creative Commons)

Two things can be derived from this bill. One is that the General Assembly has power over all the entities listed. This means that if the General Assembly creates regulations that are transphobic, they must be followed. The other is that with this bill in place, none of the institutions listed are able to pass regulations that protect transgender people. Essentially, this means that no one is saying that transgender people can’t use whatever bathroom they feel comfortable in, but no one is saying they can either. Institutions can’t dictate that you have to leave transgender people alone or set in place any other sort of protection.

This leaves transgender people in a difficult situation — do they risk going in a bathroom that doesn’t correspond with their assigned sex? There aren’t regulations in place to protect them if they do and people who may take issue with their presence aren’t obligated by law to leave them be. Furthermore, if they choose not to take the risk, what are the implications of entering the bathroom that does correspond with their assigned sex? What if their gender expression doesn’t allow them to feel safe in either men’s or women’s restrooms? What if the choice is between getting yelled at or physically harmed? For transgender people, protective regulations in states such as North Carolina are a necessity.

HB142 is tricky in the sense that the transphobia is displaced and finds another way to settle in. With this bill, there are still several avenues to oppress transgender people and absolutely no protections for them.

While I was at first annoyed by the clickbait titles when scrolling through my twitter feed, the sentiment rings true. Don’t be lured into a false sense of security with the repeal of HB2 — transgender people are still in danger and we should still be talking about this. It’s not a victory or a success. We’ve replaced one enormously problematic bill with another, only the new one more craftily conceals its issues.

The post Marks: The bathroom bill has been replaced, and the replacement is worse appeared first on Emerald Media.

On Feb. 22, President Trump rescinded the Obama-era bill that protected transgender students from discrimination. This occurred despite Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ initial reluctance to sign the bill. She told Trump that she was “uncomfortable because of the potential harm that rescinding the protections could cause transgender students.”

Despite DeVos’ lack of qualification for this position, I have to agree with her on this front. Essentially, Trump’s choice to rescind this bill means that it will be up to the states to decide on transgender rights for their schools. While this is not necessarily an issue for blue states such as Oregon, its effects could be disastrous in states that are less welcoming toward their transgender population.

Read an Emerald opinion article about how DeVos could be disastrous for Oregon here. 

The reason this has become such a hot-button issue is due to the fact that it involves children. In the right wing’s eye, it’s one thing to protect adults from harassment in bathrooms (the reasoning behind discriminatory bills such as HB2) and another to protect children. Mature adults don’t usually have an issue with sharing a restroom with a transgender person, or people of any gender identity for that matter. In fact, it’s so little of a problem in other countries that there are often bathrooms for all sexes and gender identities. I myself have encountered them both in Canada and in France.

However, this isn’t as simple of a resolution for minors for several reasons. While young children in preschool may not have much of a concept of gender, children hyperfocus on it once they hit puberty, usually in late elementary or middle school. Once children become aware of the differences between the sexes and start to behave according to this awareness, the issue of which bathrooms transgender students should use becomes a little tricky. It’s a matter of balancing the comforts of both transgender and cisgender students to create a safe environment for everybody.

Some transgender students may be comfortable using a single-stall, unisex restroom, a luxury that I was afforded at my high school. Unfortunately, not all schools have such restrooms, and some transgender students may feel uncomfortable using a “special” restroom that seems to be specified for their use. Other transgender students may simply want to use the restroom that corresponds with their gender identity. However, this may confuse other students and make them uncomfortable, regardless of whether they are aware of the transgender student’s gender identity.

While I am a fierce advocate for transgender rights, this is a difficult situation to navigate. The solution that makes the most sense to me is to have a multi-stall, unisex bathroom for any student to use. That way, it is not creating a situation in which students, regardless of their gender identity, would feel uncomfortable if they voluntarily choose to use that restroom.

Although this seems to be the best solution, it would not necessarily be an easy one to implement. Even in states where administration would be willing or obligated by law to allow such accommodations, there is the difficulty of funding either the construction of a new bathroom or the remodeling of an old one. All-in-all, there is no easy solution to accommodate transgender students where minors are concerned.

Locally, it seems that Trump’s decision will not affect the bathroom rights of transgender students. Oregon officials have stated that protections for transgender students will not change. Furthermore, the University of Oregon’s Title IX office reviewed the federal changes and confirmed that the university will not be affected.

Although Trump’s order doesn’t affect students in Oregon personally, it is still important to take action and invoke change. Lambda Legal has some advice on this for teachers and administration, such as raising transgender awareness, allowing transgender students to use their chosen name and pronouns, and having a dress code that respects gender identity. In regards to peers, it is important to use transgender students’ chosen name and pronouns, be respectful of their identity and support them in any way they may need.

As Trump’s presidency progresses, the number of policies we have to battle against increases. In this troubling time, we must remain resilient both as minorities and as allies to other minorities. It is only by banding together and fighting for what we believe in that we may create change for the better.

Follow Logan on Twitter @actually_logan

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Although the Human Rights Campaign, the largest civil rights organization in the United States, claims to “advocate for LGBTQ equality and educate the people about LGBTQ issues,” many people in the queer and trans community take issue with it.

Currently under fire by the LGBTQIA+ community is the HRC’s guide of corporations that are rated on their human rights record. This is called the Equality Index. Kate Raphael, a longtime organizer with Lesbians And Gays Against Intervention, a queer radical collective in the Bay Area, is just one of the individuals frustrated with this guide. She has stated that the guide is not a human rights record because the only things analyzed are those such as gay people in management, or domestic partner benefits. From this, it can be deduced that the guide is perhaps not all-inclusive and comprehensive enough to benefit everyone who identifies as LGBTQIA+.

Even in light of its recent campaigns, the HRC has been notoriously exclusive towards the transgender community. In 2007, they supported a bill that would outlaw companies’ discriminatory behavior towards gay, lesbian and bisexual employees. However, this bill left out transgender people. Notably, many other LGBTQIA+ organizations were against the bill because of its transgender exclusion.

The HRC also spends far too much time lobbying for marriage equality and military service for gay people, without giving much attention to other issues like healthcare and housing. The focuses of the HRC are an indication of their privilege as middle and upper-class white people. Because of this privilege, their concentrations are on problems that middle and upper-class white LGBTQIA+ people face. They lack a comprehension of intersectionality: the awareness that different identities intersect in complicated ways and cause each person’s experience of oppression to be unique.

Beyond this, the HRC has little diversity in its employees. It has previously been referred to as a “White Men’s Club,” and staff who work at the HRC have described the environment as “judgmental, exclusionary, sexist and homogenous.” Women who work at the HRC have reported feeling “excluded every day.” An internal report generated by the HRC in 2015 exposed some upsetting realities for minority employees of the organization as well. Besides the little diversity that exists, transgender employees report feeling tokenized, women experience sexist treatment and favoritism occurs, especially among the white men employed.

Bernie Sanders has also critiqued the HRC as being “part of the establishment.” By this, he was addressing the fact that the HRC is mainly run by and for white cisgender men who “just so happen to be gay.” Hillary Clinton and the HRC were shocked by this so-called “attack”:

Really Senator Sanders? How can you say that groups like @PPact and @HRC are part of the "establishment" you're taking on? -H

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 20, 2016

We share @PPact's disappointment in Sanders' attacks. @HRC has proudly taken on the establishment & fought for LGBT people for over 30 years

— HumanRightsCampaign (@HRC) January 20, 2016

However, Sanders stood his ground as a socialist anti-establishment candidate and clearly recognizes the HRC’s flaws.

As a campaign that claims to support human rights and advocate for LGBTQ equality, the HRC could do a lot better. Evidently, there are a lot of holes that need to be patched up. The HRC should be taking responsibility for the mistakes they have made in the past and using them to move forward and create a better organization. They should initiate an increase in the diversity of their staff and begin to cater more towards transgender people, the lower class and people of color, and improve workplace conditions for their minority employees. This may include the simple act of telling the men not to be sexist and adding more gender neutral restrooms for the transgender and nonbinary employees.

I’d like to address an argument that I regularly receive whenever I am critical of a movement or organization that is claiming to work for progress in social equality. While these movements and organizations may have positive attributes, it is always important to look at them with a critical eye. By analyzing the flaws in such an organization or movement, I am not dismissing it as horrible or something that you shouldn’t participate in. I am thinking critically about its flaws and how it could be improved moving forward. The HRC has advocated plenty for the rights of gay and lesbian people and helped with the push towards marriage equality, but that doesn’t excuse its other behaviors or mean that we should praise it blindly. My article on the women’s march is another example of this sort of critical analysis.

The only time this doesn’t apply is when I’m talking about Donald Trump.

Follow Logan on Twitter @actually_logan

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