Coming to college was the first time I was out as a transgender man, a realization I came to when I was about 12 and hid until my first college class. My freshman year went well and I found real allies with many of the faculty I interacted with.

I am a student in the James Madison College. I graduate May 7 with a degree in social relations and policy as well as political theory and constitutional democracy, or PTCD. After my experiences, though, I wish I had never taken PTCD.

My sophomore year, I had a professor who didn’t approve of my gender identity and made sure I was aware of how much he didn’t like it.

When I told him I prefer to go by my chosen name, Elliott, he called me by my birth name and argued about what my real name was. After class, I told him I prefer male pronouns because I was transgender and identified as a man. Instead, during class, he referred to me as a woman whenever he referenced something I said. When I or other students corrected him, he said, “He? But you’ve got … you’re a woman!”

It shouldn’t be acceptable for a professor to reference a student’s breasts in class, especially as a way to deny someone’s gender identity. I gave up after a month of trying to be accepted and mentally checked out of the class. The attitude of denying minority students the right to express themselves and their opinions is pervasive in PTCD.

I was told by the James Madison College that our comments about professors on the SIRs form were always read and taken seriously. I detailed my experiences on these forms and never heard once from a professor or from an administrator. Thanks to encouragement by faculty allies and my friends, I spoke with Jeff Judge, the assistant dean of James Madison College. He did what he could and directed me to the the Office for Inclusion. Nothing came of the discussion outside promises that the professor would be spoken with.

I didn’t push it until I heard from a friend that this professor has been put on the inclusion committee for James Madison College. This didn’t sit right with me given the effort this professor put into making me feel as excluded as possible.

So I wrote a letter to Dean Sherman Garnett and spoke with him at a meeting.

The dean’s first response was to excuse what happened with concern for academic freedom and sensitivity for the professor’s feelings if he were singled out before backtracking, when another person attending our meeting pointed out that the offending professor’s behavior was unacceptable.

When I asked if this professor would be allowed to remain on the inclusion committee, I wasn’t given a straightforward answer. Even after acknowledging what this professor did was wrong, they could not commit to removing him from the inclusion committee.

I wrote this piece not to single out the professor, because his views are that of a bigot and hopefully we will move past that as a society. I wrote this piece in hopes that other transgender students will avoid PTCD, if not James Madison College as a whole. Although I have found many great mentors here, it is hard to endorse a college whose administration does not care about what I endured.

Elliott is a senior studying social relations and policy, as well as political theory and constitutional democracy. He asked to only be identified by his first name.