The Gender and Sexuality Alliance at Creighton celebrated the Transgender Day of Remembrance on Nov. 20 by organizing a vigil in St. John’s Church.
“It’s the day worldwide where we remember those who have died in the transgender community due to transphobic violence,” said Arts and Sciences sophomore Leo Rosas, GSA’s secretary. “We got together as a team to cut out almost a hundred paper hearts. We put the names [of the victims] and where they were from, and we put the hearts outside.”
GSA members said prayers and read poems during the vigil before reading the names of all the known victims of transphobic violence during the past year.
Arts and Sciences senior Sharmaine Lee, GSA’s president, explained that people in the trans community are highly susceptible to hate crimes, especially people of color.
“These aren’t people who died due to everyday circumstances,” said Lee. “They died because of their identity.”
GSA’s historian, Arts and Sciences senior Alessandra Panares, feels that transgender issues should be highlighted more often within the larger LGBT community.
“The issues that are shared by people who have different sexual orientations and people who have different gender identities do at some point diverge,” said Panares. “People in the trans and non-binary community are the victims of hate crimes a lot more than people that are of different sexual orientation only- not to say that there’s not homophobic violence generally.”
The turnout at the vigil was smaller than the GSA expected this year.
“The transgender community really isn’t that big on campus,” said Rosas. “To Creighton’s community, it’s not necessarily that big of a deal.”
Panares echoed Rosas’ sentiments by attributing the lack of participation to the fact that Creighton is a Jesuit institution.
“I think that [transgender awareness] is very difficult for Creighton as a Jesuit Catholic institution to address, because the idea of gender is very strictly stated to be a binary within the Catholic Church doctrine,” Panares said. “I do think when we have days of remembrance like this, though, that this campus is welcoming to the idea.”
“I would just hope that Creighton’s campus becomes more aware of the transgender community at Creighton,” said Rosas. “They do not necessarily have to understand it, just respect it and be accepting.”