From my short time here at Muskingum University, I have the observed leaps and bounds in the transgender community and in the LGBT community as a whole. I have witnessed the entirety of the Greek community come to the realization that transgender individuals have the most difficult time trying to fit into their organizations. Our current struggle is the fight for gender-neutral bathrooms to make this campus more inclusive and transgender friendly. Personally, trekking through Boyd Hall to locate the mysterious gender-neutral bathroom or having to wait forever for the family restroom in the library to be vacant is far from ideal.

Half the problems the transgender community faces stems from society’s opinion of us. Many of us are fearful to even try to enter any restroom at all when the only thing we ever hear are the stories of violence and legal action that has been taken against us. There have been multiple times where both I and other members of the transgender community have been met with confusion and anger when attempting to do something as simple as using a public restroom.

Amid the flurry of panic and national outrage at the recent bill that North Carolina passed, fear has spread to this corner of the nation as well. We can only wonder if such a law would be passed here in Ohio as well and jeopardize our freedom on Muskingum's campus. Bathrooms themselves are not the only problem.

There is only one gender-neutral shower on all of campus, located on one of the lower levels of Patton. Patton, however, only has one co-ed floor with a confusing layout that in essence separates male-assigned and female-assigned students with a rat-maze of walls and doors. Imagine if when you came to campus, you were given limited housing options and were told you were "expected" to use the restroom of a different gender than your own. This is the dilemma people like us face. We’re barely scraping by, some of us accepting our fate and stepping into the background in gendered environments where we don’t belong. Others have been lucky, managing to jump through hoops to reach their housing goals. As for me, I’ve had no choice but to have a female-identifying roommate on a co-ed floor. I shouldn’t complain – it’s better than no housing at all.

The National Transgender Discrimination Survey published in 2012 by the National Center for Transgender Equality reported that 1/5 of college student respondents received no housing options at all.

Though the LGBT community here exists in a safe environment with people who understand and respect us, we still have a long way to go on the subject of human rights. For now, I will be satisfied with a room on a co-ed floor in Finney, forever dreaming of going Greek. I hope that one day, people like me will live the same as any other student at Muskingum University.