The University is “actively exploring the possibility of offering benefits for gender reassignment surgery in both plans for students and employees,” though no decisions have yet been made, according to University Spokesperson Martin Mbugua.
Although Princeton was ranked in the “Top 10 Trans-Friendly Colleges and Universities” by the Advocate this past August, the University differs from Brown, Stanford and 34 other institutions in that it does not currently offer coverage to students for gender reassignment surgery under its student health care plan.
Princeton health care plans for both students and employees currently provide coverage for prescriptions including hormone therapy and mental health counseling.
LGBT Center Director Debra Bazarsky said that the Center and University Health Services have partnered in examining the surgery and arrangements for its coverage under the student and employee health care plans.
“There are transgender students on campus, some of whom are seeking surgery, some who have no intention of ever having surgery and some who’ve already had surgery,” Bazarsky said. “And so, for the students who are seeking surgery, I absolutely believe that we should have coverage if we’re able to provide it.”
In the fall of 2012, a transgender working group was created to “ensure that students who are transgender or transitioning have a seamless process at Princeton,” Bazarsky said.
Vice Provost of Institutional Equity and Diversity Michele Minter, who created the working group, said that “it was time to revisit our progress in providing resources to transgender students,” especially considering the gradual increase in the number of transgender individuals on campus.
One subcommittee of the working group focuses on health care. Minter explained that the subcommittee was created not with the specific goal to change Princeton’s health care policy, but rather to identify the opportunities and concerns of transgender individuals first.
Tzu-Yung Huang ’15, the president of Princeton Equality Project, a student LGBT activist group, said PEP would encourage the coverage of gender reassignment surgery in the student health plan.
“It is a part of a collective effort to make Princeton more friendly toward that community and to be more inclusive of trans identity,” Huang said.
Huang also noted that although LGBT students have been successful in winning some benefits, like the recent gender-neutral housing expansion to residential colleges, other changes, such as the increase of gender-neutral bathrooms on campus, “have proven to be much more difficult with the administration.”
“We can tell them [the administration] that there are improvements that can be done, but when it comes to University policy, a lot of these will have to come from the administration — that they themselves want to make a difference,” Huang said.
PRIDE Alliance co-president John Parvin ’16 also said that he encourages the University to allow students and faculty to have “gender confirmation surgery.”
Parvin said that the currently used term “gender reassignment surgery” is a misnomer.
“These individuals absolutely know what their gender is and who they are, and it is not for us to say for some reason, the surgery is reassigning those identities,” Parvin explained. “It is only confirming what they already know about themselves.”
Huang said that while transgender students are present on campus, many are not publicly “out.”
Parvin said the invisibility of transgender students was a “very real issue” on campus. Although it is necessary for the voices of these students to be heard to make the right policy decisions and cultural changes, the “current status quo” makes these individuals unwilling to speak or be visible “for fear of very real repercussions against them,” Parvin said.
Despite ongoing challenges for LGBT students, Huang said the atmosphere surrounding the LGBT community on campus has significantly changed over the past decade.
“It used to be very conservative and very unwelcoming,” Huang explained. “We have a lot of alumni who are not even that old — they’re from maybe the 90s or 80s — and they have horrible experiences at Princeton just from being an LGBT person, and that hasn’t changed until very recently.”
Huang said there is still more work to be done for LGBT students. “But I do think Princeton is moving in the right direction, making progress.”
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