Getting your poster approved is easy. Leave a copy with the University of Utah’s Student Union front desk, wait a few hours for it to be reviewed and get all the posters timestamped and ready to be put up. The front desk manager looks for one thing: whether or not your post is sponsored by a U-registered student organization, department or faculty member.

Once you’ve got that, you can put up any message you want all over campus. As someone who used to work that front desk, I would never expect to be made complicit in propagating a message that might make the U feel unsafe for some of my closest friends.

I should have known better.

The poster approval process uses Policy 1-007, the University’s Speech Policy as its guidelines. The policy is in place to help maintain an atmosphere of academic freedom, to help “discover and disseminate knowledge” in an environment with the “fullest degree of intellectual freedom.” 

But when registered student organizations like Young Americans for Freedom paint campus walls with claims that the “transgender movement harms women and children” or that transgender people are somehow “damaged,” is that the beginning of an academic conversation? Or is it an abrupt and violent call to close off opposition on the threat of being labeled an abuser, pedophile or something worse?

Look at the real impact posters like these have and you have your answer.

Rather than invite curiosity, you put out a message that, because of its location on campus, is unavoidable to students — students who could very well be transgender themselves. You invite others to look at their fellow students with suspicion and you ask transgender students to defend their very existence when all they wanted to do that day was get to their math class like anyone else.

On its face, the posters might look like a good-faith attempt at debate. But in reality, it’s a sign to transgender students at the U that screams “You should be afraid to be here.” We wouldn’t allow messaging that implies an entire race, religion or sex is dangerous and deserves to be interrogated. Why do we think it’s okay to do so now? 

It can be easy to pretend that LGBTQIA+ people aren’t at the U. We certainly aren’t part of the image that the U likes to advertise. You’ll see plenty of videos saying “U Belong” with your people, your faith and your fellow football fans. But it’s much harder to find a video that showcases a visibly gender-non-conforming person.

While our LGBT Resource Center works hard to make the community feel welcome on campus, the administration itself often acts contrary to that goal. Just a few weeks ago, they chose to penalize a queer-centered event on campus for content they found offensive on posters put up on campus.

It’s interesting to observe what is considered “inciting violence,” and what slides by. It’s frustrating, as an LGBTQIA+ student at the U, to be told that “resources are available for you” to help deal with the harm the U has allowed to happen.

If all students at the U really do belong, it’s the U that should know better. It should know better than to be anything but unambiguous in its condemnation of transphobia and its propagation on campus. It should do better in protecting its students’ right to uninterrupted and unburdened access to an education they are paying for. The administration, the Committee on Student Affairs and even ASUU should be doing their best to call out and punish registered student organizations abusing that status to promote a hateful ideology that has, nationally, called for violence against a marginalized community.

When I was working for the Union and one of many enforcing the poster policy, I remember taking down posters promoting white supremacy, violence against immigrants and victim-blaming survivors of interpersonal violence. I didn’t take them down because they were wrong or harmful to vulnerable community members. I took them down because they hadn’t been stamped.

It’s shameful that what separates hate that has no place in an institution of higher learning and hate that does is a little bit of ink and some paperwork. I’ll let you decide what that says about how the U values its students and their unchangeable, immutable identities.

The Daily Utah Chronicle publishes guest op-eds written by faculty, elected officials and other members of the public on topics relevant to students at the University of Utah. The Chronicle welcomes guest op-ed pitches here.