A new button sporting the phrase “I’ll Go With You” has appeared on the campus of Oregon State University aimed at giving support to transgender students and transgender bathroom policies.
Student P.J. Harris, who is the “student success peer facilitator” of the school’s Pride Center, told The Oregonian that, so far, around 100 buttons have been handed out on campus.
The student insisted that the buttons are intended to foster a “buddy system” for those claiming to be transgender who might feel vulnerable in the school’s bathrooms.
“They see that [button] and know that someone out there is visibly saying, ‘I stand with you, I support you,'” Harris claimed.
It isn’t clear why Harris and the LGBT community at Oregon State feel transgender students are “vulnerable” on campus, and when asked how many OSU students claim to be transgender, the gay advocating student said he didn’t know of any.
Still, Harris proclaimed the city of Corvallis as a community that doesn’t embrace the transgender community “as well as it could.”
While the transgender bathroom issue was kicked into high gear with the introduction of a bill in North Carolina that limited public bathrooms to people whose sex at birth matches the gender the facility is designated for, the “I’ll Go With You” campaign was started at OSU before the national controversy arose.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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