Sports Administration junior William Lamphier loves football.
The year before she came to LSU, the team had won the national championship. It was part of the school’s draw when they made the decision to move from Maryland. Lamphier is nonbinary and uses all pronouns.
“I could say I was going in for a championship-winning football team,” Lamphier said.
When Lamphier was choosing a college, she hadn’t come out as transgender yet, but identified as a gay biological male. She was skeptical of moving to the South when considering LSU, but didn’t feel too anxious because she didn’t yet identify as nonbinary.
“That did put a lot less stress on me because I didn’t know how to feel about my gender at the time,” she said.
Halfway through their freshman year, Lamphier began to come out as nonbinary to friends, family and co-workers, and she was happy to see that most people were accepting of her.
“I was a little scared at first because I wouldn’t sure how the people around me would deal with it,’ Lamphier said. “But thanks to a great group of people who themselves were struggling with their identify that really helped me open up to my own.”
Her sophomore year, she began working as an equipment manager trainee for the LSU football team. Working as a trans nonbinary person in a male-dominated field was scary to her, yet she ensured to stand up for herself if there were issues or micro-aggressions.
“I can’t exactly say it’s discrimination,” Lamphier said. “But it’s feeling different.”
Lamphier knows people who have to hide the fact that they’re queer in order to stay in sports-related careers, and she also knows people who’ve quit sports because hiding became too stressful. She felt like she had to pick between her nonbinary identity or her passion for football.
“It was either sports or trying to live your best life, and you should try and live your best life,” Lamphier said. “For me, I simply just can’t differentiate the two. Football is a second language to me. It might be my second language, but it was my first love, and I just can’t get rid of it.”
When it came to finding housing and roommates her sophomore year, Lamphier never changed her biological gender after hearing online that the process was difficult. After living with randomized roommates her first two years, Lamphier is excited to room with three other nonbinary people for her junior year.
“It’s gonna be a new kind of experience for me,” Lamphier said. “Already knowing them is one thing but knowing that they’re going through something similar is really kind of relieving for me, because I won’t be the only one that’s different in an apartment.”
Lamphier finds frustration in homophobic and transphobic preachers in free speech alley. On one occasion, Lamphier wore a feminine outfit including a skirt, suspenders and a blouse when a man came up to her saying discriminatory statements and accusing her of sin.
“There’s always going to be someone that doesn’t like you for any given reason,” Lamphier said. “If you just let that be and just say, ‘I don’t care what you think,’ then it doesn’t become a big problem for you.”
Journalism junior Emily Mumola is a transgender woman. Like Lamphier, she’s from Maryland and was drawn to LSU because of the football culture. After some initial concerns about moving to Louisiana, she realized that there is a big difference between living in the South and living on a college campus.
“Honestly, I was more interested in LSU football than in Louisiana or the university,” Mumola said. “Once I went to a game there, I really realized the opportunities that the school could provide for me both in an academic setting and a lifestyle setting.”
She identified with her biological gender until the spring semester of her freshman year of college, which is when she began to transition. She informed ResLife of her gender change when she had to find housing for her junior year.
“I had no issues there as soon as I updated my information with ResLife with my name, immediately got referred to with the correct name and from there on out, so really simple,” Mumola said.
While that process was easy for Mumola, finding roommates was difficult. Transgender people are not able to use the same roommate search programs that LSU offers to other students according to Mumola. She wishes this was not the case and that ResLife offered her more resources.
Catherine David, associate director of communications for ResLife, said that each student’s needs and experiences require different things from the department. ResLife assigns a single contact person to each trans student, so they don’t have to tell their story multiple times, and works one on one with them to ensure their housing needs are accommodated.
“Our entire team is committed to working with all students to ensure each individual who desires the on-campus experience can live where they want to,” David said.
Former LSU student Exquisite Williams had to help trans students access their rooms when she worked as a lead desk assistant for ResLife. Since access to halls in dorms is restricted by the gender programmed into a student’s Tiger Card, trans students who haven’t yet changed their gender marker on their ID can sometimes not access their rooms.
In other cases, students who had changed their gender marker would room in the hall of their biological sex—like trans men who felt safer rooming in women’s halls — and would have to get their cards reprogrammed. Williams said she sometimes had to go into the system and change it so that students could enter their halls.
“Typically this happens after the student has lost their card and has to have it reprogrammed,” Williams said. “When they get there on move-in day, access isn’t usually a problem.”
Mumola wishes information about finding housing as a transgender LSU student was easier to find online. When finding accommodations for her situation, information on her options were not easily accessible.
“To just have vagueness in the information of what resources you’re providing, that’s going to just only build that fear and that anxiety and make it more difficult for somebody to reach out for resources that are available,” Mumola said.
Despite the trouble, Mumola found two cisgender women to live with, and is excited for the change. Overall, Mumola believes that while transitioning at LSU may be scary, the LGBTQ+ faculty caucus and LGBTQ clubs on campus provide great resources.
“I’m still at LSU for a reason, because I still feel like it’s the right school for me,” Mumola said. “I don’t see any gender-related reason to change to a northern school.”