After a year and a half of acrimony, Rochester Institute of Technology is again offering hormone replacement therapy for its transgender students.

Wendy Gelbard, the college's associate vice president of Student Health, Counseling and Wellness, wrote in a letter last month: "After many months of carefully listening and talking to students and experts in the field of transgender health care, we are pleased to be able to offer a wider spectrum of care for our transgender students, most notably the addition of gender affirming hormone therapy."

This is the service that student health center doctor Annamaria Kontor had been providing to a small number of students before being fired for doing so in May 2017. She filed a complaint with the state Division of Human Rights, which determined later that year the university had likely discriminated against her.

RIT students protested Kontor's removal and the school's general position on transgender care. After a comprehensive review of its policies, RIT will restore hormone replacement therapy at the student health center.

Its doctors will receive some training and supervision from experts from the University of Rochester Medical Center and then will be able to monitor students on their own, spokeswoman Ellen Rosen said. RIT will also bring a physician from URMC's transgender clinic on campus for two half-days per month for more in-depth consultation. The news was first reported by RIT's Reporter magazine.

Most other local colleges do not have formal policies in place regarding health care for transgender students and do not offer hormone replacement therapy prescription or monitoring. Students can go to Trillium Health or URMC, but getting an appointment there is difficult.

RIT otherwise has taken significant steps toward supporting LGBTQ students, including offering gender-neutral housing, but the uproar over Kontor's firing swamped those efforts.

"I'm glad they finally brought things back, but I feel like it shouldn't have happened in the first place," one transgender student, Henry Trettenbach, said. "This wouldn't have happened if it weren't for the insistence of so many people."

Kontor is now in private practice, including attending at Trillium. She did not respond to a request for comment; her lawyer, Paul Keneally, said the two sides had reached a confidential settlement.

JMURPHY7@Gannett.com

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