Katelyn Burns

When she heard that her university campus would be shutting down after spring break due to the coronavirus pandemic, Alexis feared her life could fall apart. She wasn’t able to afford campus housing this semester and is living instead in a nearby homeless shelter. But she depended on her school’s health and fitness center for daily showers and her school’s library for quiet study time. “My whole life revolves around the university, and the university is closed,” said Alexis, a 34-year-old trans woman and student at the University of Eastern Michigan. (A university spokesperson told Vox that campus dining halls are still […]

Emma thought that going off to Carleton College would be the beginning of a new life. The 18-year-old trans girl had struggled to come out in high school after repeated outings to her strict Italian Catholic parents in New Jersey. “Those were difficult,” she told Vox. “I like to say that I negotiated my way back into the closet” to finish high school. She thought college would become her salvation and chose the liberal arts school of about 2,000 students in Northfield, Minnesota, because of a visit, during one of her tours, to the on-campus LGBTQ center. While Emma’s dad […]