CW: transphobia, hate speech.

On Wednesday, Apr. 10, DU’s chapter of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) hosted a movie screening event with Protect Kids Colorado at Daniels College of Business. Students across campus felt this event perpetuated transphobia and rallied together to show that the queer community and allies will not tolerate hateful rhetoric.

When students found out that this event was to be hosted on DU’s campus, the queer community and allies immediately initiated a large-scale call to action to prevent the event from occurring and causing harm. A petition to cancel the event eventually garnered over 1,000 signatures. The ‘Transgender Support Sign-On Letter’ denounced the dissemination of harmful rhetoric that perpetuates discrimination against transgender individuals and called on the university to prioritize inclusivity and safety for all, as stated in the Honor Code.

When the petition didn’t gain traction with the administration, third-year student and president of the Queer Student Alliance (QSA), Evelyn Stovin, organized a protest to occur during the time of the movie screening. Over 150 students attended the demonstration, holding signs and chanting. Out of these, about 60 attended the movie screening to ask challenging questions and show that the DU population stands with the trans community.

“There were way more people there to protest the event than there were to support the event and if that’s the case, DU needs to go with the majority opinion and know that this is not what students want on this campus. The school needs to support queer and trans students’ rights and success,” said Stovin.

The Cultural Center Director for Gender and Sexuality and Student Success, Eric Duran, agreed that trans students feeling safe and welcome on campus must be of utmost priority.

“We want students to know that they have resources on this campus and this is not a widely supported event. We want to make sure that students know that staff here don’t stand for transphobia,” said Duran.

In this same sentiment, Duran hosted an arts and crafts night at the Cultural Center during TPUSA’s event to create a space for people who didn’t feel comfortable attending the protest but wanted to be in community with other queer people during a time where they didn’t feel safe in other spaces on campus.

“Art is a freedom of who you are, so we wanted to really tie that to our identities and the freedom to express yourself on campus. The impact of a transphobic movie screening and bringing in a transphobic speaker is that it can be really harmful for someone’s view of their identity and who they are, so we wanted to have this alternative space,” said Duran.

Students and student groups across campus, such as the QSA, Black Student Alliance (BSA) and the on-campus Thrift Store agreed with Stovin and Duran about the potential emotional, physical and psychological harm of this event on trans and queer students and community members. These groups and more were vocal about their disapproval of the event through social media posts and affirmed that it demonstrated hypocrisy on behalf of DU’s administration given their proclaimed values of diversity and inclusion.

Wilder Fox-Dunsker, a first-year student, spoke at the protest and was one of the loudest voices chanting and challenging the rhetoric of the event.

“This is inherently a discriminatory event because it’s teaching that kids can’t learn about these things — that they can’t start identifying under a certain age, and ideally, that they can’t do anything about it physically if they want to. The pursuit of education is the University’s entire thing, and Turning Point is all about removing trans and gay history topics from being taught and that’s education,” said Fox-Dunsker.

Organizers of the protest were satisfied and impressed with the turnout, and the sense of unity and community could not be ignored throughout the course of the demonstration.

“I’ve been saying this for months now but [queer students] probably are the majority on campus. There is, if not thriving, at least a very prominent queer community on campus, a very prominent trans community on campus, and we just need to make that more known,” said Stovin.

The demonstration started outside of Daniels College of Business with sign-making and speeches from students about the importance of coming together and individuals sharing their own experiences with transphobia and discrimination on campus.

“Hate crimes happen on campus all the time, not just to the queer community but to all marginalized communities, and they either receive no press, or we file a Title IX, and the investigation takes so long and they ultimately just sweep it under the rug. We can’t be living like this; we want to get an education, improve ourselves for the future and contribute to society, but it makes it so hard when we have to live with all of this hatred and negativity day to day,” said Stovin.

After speeches and chanting outside, students performed a sit-in in the hallway outside the movie screening, chanting in between classes.

“It’s a heavy-hearted community. I saw a lot of familiar faces and a lot of unfamiliar faces, so I think there was a very large sense of community tonight,” said Fox-Dunsker.

Chants among student advocates included “protect trans kids,” “trans rights are human rights,” “stop your whining, trans kids are dying,” “trans lives are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back,” “say it loud, say it clear, trans folks are welcome here” and more.

The sense of empowerment and unity amongst the attendees of the demonstration resonated through the crowd, even through moments when the sit-in needed to be silent. Protesters recognized that freedom of speech is relevant, but not necessarily applicable when communities are being harmed by the views that are being shared.

“They have this event talking about how trans people don’t actually exist, that we’re all delusional, that we’re pedophiles trying to indoctrinate children into some kind of cult—that’s where I draw the line because that’s not freedom of expression, that’s inciting violence against people,” said Stovin.

After the event, it was clear that certain students had taken the mentalities preached in the movie screening to heart and that the fears of retaliation against trans people were understandable. A group of friends had put up their sign from the event in their window across from campus in an attempt to demonstrate further advocacy for trans students on campus, reading “transphobia is not welcome here.”

Less than six hours after they put up the sign, these students had to report that somebody broke into their home and left behind hateful notes reading, “no such thing as trans children,” “no kid is born in the wrong body,” “stop transing kids” and more.

Rosie Ayala, second-year student who was present the night the break-in happened said that “this is completely illegal, a form of harassment and put us in extreme danger. Who knows what could have happened if someone were to go upstairs, and now [the people who live there] no longer feel safe in their home.”

The correlation between this event being hosted and students facing more hate speech is evident, given that the students’ sign mentioned nothing about children.

“After a documentary about public school indoctrination of kids into a transgender ideology was hosted at DU, I think certain students felt like they could say any type of hate speech about the topic,” said Ayala.

“We need to figure out what the line is between freedom of expression for all ‘diversity of thought’ and hate speech. We need to know where the line is for people’s different opinions and outright hatred and bigotry. Far too often it crosses the line,” said Stovin.

After the screening was finished, many students met in a reserved room of Daniels to fill out an EOIX mass report in an attempt to pressure the University to act on the matter.

“Hopefully this will get enough press, enough publicity that DU will want to fix it because ultimately what they don’t want is a lawsuit, what they don’t want is bad publicity. They’re worried about enrollment rates going down, but I’ve gotten numbers of incoming freshmen messaging me through the QSA [instagram] asking what the event is and if they should even come here, if it’s even safe,” said Stovin.

Throughout the event, students voiced their opinions about how the event made them feel as queer students and articulated the message they hoped to send to upper administration about how the community felt about this event. 

“We can’t be living like this; we want to get an education, improve ourselves for the future and contribute to society, but it makes it so hard when we have to live with all of this hatred and negativity on the day-to-day,” said Stovin.

“There’s a lot of kids hurting and scared. I’m hurting and scared. My message is that [the administration] has some repairing to do with this community. You’ve shown us you don’t care because this entire thing is trying to eradicate trans knowledge, trans rights, so it feels like they don’t want us here. They try to dance around that, but they’ve made it clear that they don’t want us here. My message to the administration is that they seriously messed up in letting this one slide, and they have some serious repairs to do,” said Fox-Dunsker.

Duran reflected similar concerns, emphasizing that students must be the priority on campus. “I would want upper administration to understand how these events really can impact our students and how we can revisit the values amongst campus that may be incongruent with each other,” said Duran.

Stovin expressed future initiatives aimed to protect and advocate for trans and queer students and community members at DU. They have meetings scheduled with Vice Chancellor Todd Adams and new Associate Vice Chancellor Marty Jacob.

“[We want] to discuss how Title IX has repeatedly failed queer people because it doesn’t protect us, but they don’t allow us to protect ourselves,” said Stovin.

Despite the innately hateful nature of Turning Point’s event, students came together and demonstrated their unity as queer students and allies and continued to develop an important community that will advocate for each other when the University fails to.

“I’ve heard a lot of people say that this was the first time they’ve felt safe or empowered to come out as trans, to openly be trans, which is disheartening that people don’t feel safe to be out on campus but also great that we could create the space and community… We could do a lot of change and create a lot of change and do a lot of damage to this institution they’ve created by working together and sharing our resources,” said Stovin.

The documentary Erin Lee was invited along with her organization, Protect Kids Colorado, is called “Art Club” and is about her experience with her child coming out as transgender after joining their school’s GSA. The film aligns with the religious goals of the organization to educate and unite conservative community members to fight against public school’s supposed indoctrination of children into gender and sexuality politics. 

Their web page describes their mission as an organization and uses rhetoric asserting that changing sex education and children’s rights in public schools is a way of protecting children. “A substantial percentage of law-abiding parents and citizens have been conditioned to believe that public schools are a safe environment and that indoctrination concerning sexualization, and gender transformation is not being encouraged in the classrooms. All evidence shows that this is happening in every classroom across Colorado.”

Student advocacy efforts in the face of transphobia demonstrate the undeniable unity amongst queer community members and allies at DU.  For more resources and information, visit the Cultural Center in the Community Commons and/or reach out to the QSA via Instagram.