UT student Joey Ovalle (Shannon Kintner/Daily Texan)
Transgender students at the University of Texas at Austin will be able to use a preferred name on university and medical records under a new policy this summer.
Students were able to request to use a preferred name on university documents beginning last fall, but the new policy includes medical records in addition to class rosters and ID cards, The Daily Texan reports.
The policy was the result of the LGBT presidential task force that uses the input of faculty and students to advance LGBT rights on campus.
UT administrators had to address the concern of identifying students off campus in the event that a student became involved with the police and the university was asked to verify a student’s name. In order to verify the name on record, the student’s legal name is on the back of the student ID, and the preferred name is on the front.
However, a legal name change is required for a different name on diplomas or transcripts.
From The Daily Texan:
Music studies sophomore Joey Ovalle identifies as a trans man and was approved for a preferred name last fall. Ovalle said when he first came out as transgender he asked all his friends to call him “Joey.” Ovalle said while he had never had a professor call him by the wrong first name because of the change, he did have a professor mention his middle name, which was a feminine name, because the preferred name policy did not apply to middle names at the time. Ovalle said he also faced problems buying football tickets because his preferred name did not match the one on his credit card.
Ovalle said he felt outed when people would call him by his birth name instead of his preferred name.
“It’s not necessarily being outed by it that bothered me,” Ovalle said. “It’s the questions and the explanations that people feel entitled to after that which can be difficult to deal with.”
