I know I had already touched upon it, but now that school’s out and all my pictures are uploaded, I wanted to mention more about Clark’s Trans Day of Remembrance this year. One of OPEN’s main goals next semester will be making the campus more Trans-friendly and aiding legislation meant to help Transgender individuals, so I thought it might be helpful for myself as well to recap. It was a multi-faceted event, and we had a vigil, signs, tabling, and a push to make more of our restrooms gender neutral.

I had hardly realized the vigil was happening until it was over. Being the busy-body I am, I had been too worried about its production than actually experiencing it. After everyone had gotten their tea lights, we stood around in a circle and read off stories of Trans victims. I was counting to see how many we had gone through so I’d know when to make the closing remarks (thinking: “Five? Yes, I think that was the fifth. Seven more? Wait, was that sixth? Oh no…”), when I heard a few sniffles. It was frigid out; my nose was running too. “Okay, twelfth. That’s the last one. No, actually one more. Alright.” And then it hit me. There were sixty people crowded around a circle, and they hadn’t all just come down with colds. Nope, people were crying; people were genuinely moved. And that’s when those sniffles hit me too, and we concluded the vigil.