Not on Our Campus: Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies Committee Decries Covert Attempt at Trans Erasure

By: Wright College’s Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies (GWSS) Committee 

Wright College’s Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies (GWSS) Committee collaborates on programming across the college to educate our community. Our purpose is to facilitate intersectional feminist discussion in and out of our classrooms.

As members of the GWSS Committee, we are alarmed by the recent vandalism of a library exhibit honoring Trans Day of Visibility.  Posters were displaced and defaced. Books were stolen, all under the veil of anonymity.

Librarian Tineka Scalzo had curated a display in honor of Trans Day of Visibility to educate our community and to make a welcoming space for all of Wright College.  But someone in our community decided to strike against our trans students, faculty, and staff by anonymously defiling the display.

We cannot know exactly what that person was thinking because they did not come forward to engage in honest dialogue. Instead, they chose to disrespect all of us who are, or support, trans people. As members of the GWSS Committee, we are voicing our concerns publicly.  

At this moment, trans people are under political and cultural attack. Forbes reports that globally at least 350 trans or gender-expansive people were murdered in 2024.  (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiewareham/2024/11/16/350-transgender-people-murdered-in-2024-will-the-violence-ever-end/). The Human Rights Campaign identified 32 of those murders here in the United States. (https://www.hrc.org/resources/fatal-violence-against-the-transgender-and-gender-expansive-community-in-2024). Seventy anti-trans bills in 21 states have already been passed in these first four months of 2025 (https://translegislation.com/bills/2025/passed) and anti-trans hate has spewed from the federal government, including from our president. It is sad and horrifying to see this hate expressed on our college campus, in our library. We are angered and ashamed. 

Libraries strive to be a safe place for everyone, but we cannot meet that goal when someone attempts to erase a community's voices. Libraries trust people to make their own decisions about what to read and believe. The freedom to read is guaranteed by the Constitution, and libraries embrace intellectual freedom by providing equitable access to information from a multitude of perspectives.

Our library is a space for learning and growing. In its books and journals, you can find the breadth of human thought and knowledge. Civil disagreement occurs in these pages and in the conversations of students, staff, and faculty in the library and beyond its walls. The desecration of this place of open dialogue is particularly painful.  

Display explaining the anti-trans activity and encouraging student discussion. Photo Credit: Jenin Hattab

Attempts to harm or silence our trans community members will be met with resistance. Honest attempts to engage in the hard work of learning will be met with warmth and celebration. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

We invite everyone, including the person who engaged in this hateful, anti-trans activity, to come to the library to learn about the realities of trans lives. We are asking for more than tolerance. Trans rights are human rights, and trans people deserve to live full lives free from the harms of ignorance and hate.  

--The Wright College Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies Committee 

Aldo Alvarez  

Ji Choe  

Sydney Hart 

Marcy Rae Henry  

Bill Marsh 

Jo Zalea Matias  

Merry Mayer 

Anna Proffit 

Patti Renda  

Tineka Scalzo