Sarah Hansell (The Beacon)
By Sarah Hansell, Guest Commentary
Imagine you have been going to the same bar with a group of your friends every weekend for years, enjoying drinks and each other's company, never being rowdy or disruptive.
Then imagine the owner asks your group not to come to his or her bar anymore because of the color of your skin, your sexual orientation or your gender identity.
It sounds like a story from the 1950s.
It's not.
It happened this July when Christopher Penner asked the T-Girls, a group of transgender women, not to return to the Twilight Room Annex - commonly known as the P Club - because he did not want his business to be perceived as a "tranny bar."
What is the difference between this and asking a group of African-Americans or Asians, for instance, not to come back to his bar because he does not want people to think it is a "black bar" or an "Asian bar?"
No person should ever be asked to leave an establishment simply because of who they are or how they look.
However, the threat of discrimination, even of violence, is a daily reality for transgender people.
A 2011 study by the Williams Institute of the UCLA School of Law found that about 0.3 percent of American adults identify as transgender, while, according to a study by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, 13 percent of hate crimes committed in 2008 were against transgender people.
And this does not include those who suffer through dirty looks, refusal to be referred to as they wish, refusal to be allowed to use the bathroom corresponding with their gender identity and being turned away from businesses.
No person - transgender, queer, of an ethnic minority or of any minority group - should feel afraid to go to a grocery store, a restaurant, a hotel, a bar or a bathroom.
Although many schools and universities do not have specific policies in place to protect students from discrimination based on gender identity, UP included, the state of Oregon does.
Christopher Penner is currently being investigated for discrimination.
In the meantime, I ask UP students to imagine that it was you who was denied business based on a fundamental aspect of who you are.
Show your support for transgender people and, even more than that, your intolerance for discrimination of any kind, and do not give the Twilight Room Annex any of your business.
Sarah Hansell is a junior English and sociology major studying abroad in Rome. She can be reached at hansell14@up.edu
