We’re all familiar with the story of the man who, through circumstances often outside of his control, winds up with nothing to his name — but what if you don’t even have claim to your name?

As human beings, we all have the universal rights to equality and freedom from discrimination. There is no instance where it is okay to impede these, yet as a transgender individual, I have been made to feel as though I have found a loophole where it is suddenly okay for the systems I navigate in life to throw this out the window. To be more specific, I am referring to OCAD University’s absolute disregard toward my rights to equal treatment both as a human being and as a full time student of theirs.

Every other bureaucratic system I have dealt with has had procedures in place to accommodate trans people. There is a basic level of sensitivity training that is required to take place in order to provide nondiscriminatory service to all members of a community. The Ontario Human Rights Code requires equal rights and opportunities for all persons, and declares that no one can be discriminated against for gender identity or expression. If the older, rather stern and conservative looking gentleman at the bank was able to sit me down and change my file to indicate “Mr. Carpenter” without me even needing to ask, then you’d expect an institution with an astronomically high LGBT population would at least have some acknowledgement of the reality of transgender students existing within their student body.

My experience with OCAD University’s administrative system has been drawn out, frustrating, one sided, and severely damaging to my mental health and attitude toward my studies. Since coming out after beginning my university career, I had to make adjustments to my personal information while currently enrolled in the system. My initial request and reason for contacting the office of the registrar was to inquire as to the process for updating my “Display Name” in our student portal, called Canvas, where all communications with profs and peers take place, as well as containing each course syllabus, assignment and grade. Before I even go into my experiences, why are students not allowed to edit this themselves? Presumably the administration worries that students would change their display names to inappropriate or inaccurate pseudonyms, but shouldn’t we operate under the assumption that we are all adults attending a professional institution? The safety of transgender students must win over petty concerns such as this. Perhaps allowing a student to update their own display name (which I find it important to stress appears on no official documentation and so is not even vital to have legally accurate) with an option to flag any inappropriate names for instances of misconduct. With that hope for the distant future expressed, I can proceed to detail my nearly two year long catastrophe of a negotiation with a university that doesn’t care for my well being. For simplicity and to give a better idea of a timeline I will be sharing correspondence made over email with the school.

January 6, 2015 I emailed the office of the registrar asking if it would be possible to at least update this display name to my preferred name, which I clearly detail in the email. Hello OCAD, please call me William. The school replies a day later by opening with “Hello, [Birthname],” which is foreshadowing for the direct abuse and blatantly inconsiderate attitudes I will face for the next year and a half. The email then goes on to state that my preferred name should be reflected in changes to my canvas account. I am mildly taken aback by their use of my old name, but overall content with the way my school has handled my request in a timely manner. I happily log on to Canvas expecting to feel a sense of validation at the sight of my shiny and new name staring back at me, yet what I see once the page loads is the most ludicrous “solution” I have ever seen. I am mortified as I stare blankly at my user info, a feeling of burning shame and panic radiating through me. OCAD University thought it appropriate to list my name in the system, viewable to all of my classmates and teachers, as “Birthname (William) Carpenter”. Now, imagine my classmates. Imagine seeing this in your class list as a 19 year old student with likely little knowledge of transgender issues. Someone in the class has a very obviously female name, and then… a male one in brackets? You text a friend about it. “Have you checked out our class list? What the hell is that? Must be one of those sex change freaks.”

I am automatically outed without my consent. I am immediately in danger.

Hypocritical of the school to have their main entrance in the registrar building feature a ceiling-high collage of LGBT rights protests?

To put my name in brackets, the name I have lovingly picked for myself, is hugely damaging to my mental health, as there are many anxieties among trans individuals regarding their birth names. The school has indicated to me that they consider my name to not be real. They have made the decision for me on which name and version of myself define me, as if being called William is optional, an aside, an afterthought. How confusing and humiliating it is for me to have to be the one to explain the discrepancy to my peers and profs when academic pressure and social stress are already at an all time high. That July, 2015 I sent the school a follow up email detailing why this was inappropriate, and the changes I needed implemented so I would feel safe enough at the school to continue my studies. I had to message all of my profs directly for months imploring that they disregard the name that still pops up first when they search for me in their system.

I was quite clear both in my request and in explaining why it was necessary for me to have this information updated.

There is now a year gap in my school career, which, as stated in the email, was unwanted but necessary as the school did not respond to my requests or prove cooperative in alleviating my severe discomfort.

The school had not heard from me for a year. I had to put my life on hold. I worked in abusive kitchen jobs because it’s hard to find employment as a transitioning person, and then I worked abusive call center jobs because it’s hard to find work as an adult person who has not yet completed a degree. This negatively impacted my mental health, as one would expect. Against my own wishes and life goals I dropped out for a year because the mental strain was too high. The pain of facing adversity as a trans person at OCAD U compounded with the already enormous pressures of a rigorous arts program made continuing my studies virtually impossible.

OCAD U is already notorious for being the Canadian University with the lowest quality of mental health in its student body

Clearly this has been an ongoing issue that the school must be wholly reluctant to fix as I am writing this in September of 2016, and my name has only been correct in the system for all of one week. The futility of my mission as I took multiple trips to the office of the registrar (and the student card office, and financial aid, and student advising) with no luck became so draining that I almost did not continue my studies at this university. Many of the positions in the offices aforementioned are student employees, so imagine if you please how many times I have been put in a position where I have no choice to out myself to students I share classes with face to face by having to inquire at the help desk monthly about whether my name change had been updated in the system so I could get a new student card.

The online system I already detailed should have been smooth sailing, as they just have to input my name into their database (although I was told via email last month that my concern had to be forwarded to their system staff and the IT department as their system updating was faulty, and so, in “…order to ensure that all name changes are appropriately reflected by all departments, we will work to adapt our processes.” The student card, however, was an even more disgraceful and frankly disgusting ordeal.

I was told in January of 2015, upon bringing in my legal name change documents, that the student card database operates on a “separate and manual system” where an employee has to physically make their way through and input all name change requests, and that the estimate was I should check back in roughly three weeks to come in and take a new student ID photo once my name had been updated. I return a month later to be on the safe side, and am turned away (quite rudely and with an open sneer at my trans problems) and told there is absolutely no way to guess when it might be updated, sorry, shrug, bye. Both livid and hopeless I only checked back one other time that year, around 5 months later and already deep into my break from OCAD, because I grew tired of displaying my outdated student ID whenever I shopped at stores with student discounts, or whenever I would request a general admission ticket at the Art Gallery Of Ontario, which has a partnership with OCAD that grants all students free admission. I am tired of having to face a knowing, scandalized, and bemused appraisal of my ID in order to access services I have a right to just as much as any other OCAD student. This is gender based discrimination at the hands of my school. This is inaccessibility. This is systematic oppression in action. What the handling of this matter tells me is that the safety of transgender students is not prioritized, although the school is fully aware of their archaic, unreliable, and this point criminal neglect.

The trans advocacy and peer support coordinator at the 2110 Centre of Montreal says of Concordia university that “ So far every professor and [university] senator we’ve been talking to about our cause has been saying, ‘What’s the big deal? Why aren’t we already doing this?’ Yet there is a resistance from the administration that I do not understand.” York university experienced pressure from its trans student body as well for the university’s slow, case by case basis approach to name requests, and yet York still had a preferred name form available to students far ahead of OCAD’s adoption of this service. A name change in Ontario, last time I checked, was $137, and an OCAD ID card $25. We need the preferred name form to be implemented across all crevices of the system, so students who are financially struggling in direct relation to their trans status can be treated equally, and so they don’t have to maintain constant email contact in order to singlehandedly whip the school into shape at every new instance of a birthname found untouched on some rarely visited page.

The real kicker in all of this, (aside from the trauma, severely impacted mental health, judgement from students and faculty, and my wasted year) is that the only way I could elicit any immediate action or helpfulness from the school was through taking to social media. Months of emailing and checking back with no reply or adequate solution. I posted on the OCAD University Facebook page and received an answer within 24 hours. I had previously commented publicly on their page with my distress but gotten discouraged when OCAD U Social Media responded to me asking me to send screenshots to their staff. I had already provided screenshots. I had already put hours into this. It’s damaging to see that old name, why did I have to be the one to do all the legwork? Is everyone too busy to search up either my name, the student number on my account, or my email and see that the info was blatantly wrong as I had detailed in numerous screenshots over a year and a half?

Hey, Will, can you spend more hours of your day doing follow up emails with us because we are literally incompetent?

I’m appalled that the school only cares about its students when their reputation is criticized in the public eye. I have seen tremendous care exhibited by many of the OCAD U profs, however that’s of absolutely no good use to a transgender student if they cannot even make it past the registration nightmare to access this kind and supportive teaching.

I’d like to end with my latest email to the school, which I felt obligated to send in order to hopefully get the school thinking about how they are directly contributing to violence against their own transgender family. I’m writing this so the school’s utter negligence doesn’t end in transgender casualties. I’m writing this because I know I at this time have the mental capacity to, where dozens or hundreds or thousands of trans students may not due to the extensive difficulties we already face.

If we die of neglect we still die, regards, William

As of today, the school has informed me they printed me a new student card with my updated name, and I have replied with a thank you but does it still have an image of me from 2 years ago because this will cause me dysphoria too and did they even consider this, and can they please confirm I won’t have to pay for a new card, thank you very much and good day.

*Name in all screenshots/examples edited to my updated preferred name.*