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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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MONDAY, OCT. 26, 2015 | VOLUME 130 ISSUE 18
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"THE ELLEN SHOW" COMES TO CAMPUS. Ellen DeGeneres won't be here, but her show will make an appearance on campus around noon on Monday, she announced on Twitter over the weekend. Check Kansan.com and follow @KansanNews on Twitter for updates
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HOMECOMING IS THIS WEEK. Check out coverage from the week's events and features on notable alumni and students. Look for our Homecoming special issue on newsstands on Thursday, Oct. 29. Kansan.com
MISSY MINEARZKANSAN Greta Martela, executive director and founder of Trans Lifeline, speaks about the service at the Kansas Union on Friday, Oct. 23.
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Founder of Trans Lifeline speaks at KU
COURTNEY BIERMAN
@KansanNews
After her transition a few years ago, Greta Martela recognized the need for resources for transgender people. She like many other transgender people, considered suicide during that traumatic period of her life. She decided to start a lifeline for others like her — Trans Lifeline, a suicide hotline for transgender and gender nonconforming youth. It was launched in November 2014.
A month later, 17-year-old Leelah Alcorn committed suicide after her family refused to accept her gender identity. Alcorns story and suicide note, which she published on Tumblr shortly before her death, went viral, and Trans Lifeline along with it.
The hotline number began to be published around the Internet with mentions of Alcorn's name, and Lifeline's call volume rapidly increased. It has been "growing steadily" ever since, according to Martela.
"The [transgender] population has a disproportionate amount of suicides, so even when you see listings of things, they put 'LGB' separately from the 'T.'
GRETA MARTELA
Trans Lifeline Founder
KU Active Minds welcomed Martela on Friday night at the Kansas Union as its first speaker of the semester. Martela is the co-founder and executive director of Trans Lifeline.
While other LGBTQ+ hotlines offer services to transgender people, Trans Lifeline is the first specifically created for them. Martela, who is transgender, founded the organization with her wife, Nina Chaubal. Both are software engineers from the Bay Area.
Martela began her talk with
a "Trans 101" for those in the room unfamiliar with nonconforming gender identities. She explained the difference between gender and sex — gender is a person's sense of who they are, and sex is the identity, male or female, assigned to someone at birth. She also stressed the importance of cisgender allies in the movement for trans recognition and equality.
"I think the main thing that cisgender allies can do is make sure you're speaking up about
trans people when they're not around," Martela said. "When you hear something transphobic when there are no trans people around, that's the perfect time to make an issue of it. For a lot of people, they only feel like they need to be respectful when trans folks are around, and I find that pretty maddening actually."
Martela first recognized the need for a lifeline after she called when she considered suicide. Martela said when she reached out to a hotline, the
operator was less than sympathetic. Martela said she had to explain what it means to be transgender, which she said made the operator "clearly uncomfortable." She had similar experiences at hospitals, where the nurses refused to use her name and preferred pronouns. Soon after her transition, Martela began to volunteer as the outreach coordinator at TransGender San Francisco, an organization that offers support and services to transgender and gender-nonconforming people in the Bay Area. The organization does not have a formal hotline, but its voicemail would fill up with messages from people seeking counseling because they were thinking of suicide. Martela began returning the calls and listening to those who needed someone to talk to.
"Their voicemail box would just fill up with calls from all over the country because there was no one else to call," she said. "After a few weeks [working at TGSF], I realized that [returning calls] was the most significant work I was doing."
Everyone on Trans Lifeline's hotline staff identifies as transgender to prevent callers from having the experience Martela had. Toya Lopez, the Active Minds public relations chair, said this helps callers and operators "understand each other"
"The [transgender] population has a disproportionate amount of suicides, so even
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Cars filled with canned goods lined up Sunday in front of the Alumni Center for "Stuff the Bus"; a canned food drive benefiting Just Food, the Douglas County food bank.
The drive was the first Homecoming event of the week. The drive nearly doubled the amount of canned goods that it collected last year.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the University's collaboration with Just Food. The Homecoming committee incentivizes organizations on campus to donate by awarding points per item of food given. The event primarily involved Greek houses and other student organizations.
Points earned through philanthropic acts and shows of school spirit are tallied at the end of this week, and the organization with the most points wins a trophy and recognition at the halftime show on Saturday during the football game against Oklahoma, with a winner from both the Greek and student organization divisions.
Perry Feinstein, a member of Zeta Beta Tau, said his fraternity's motivation to donate is for charity and competition.
By 1 p.m., the drive had collected nearly 1,000 cans, and by 3 p.m., it had reached 3,000. By the end of the drive, the bus had been stuffed with roughly 4,600 food items — almost twice the amount of last year's drive, according to Homecoming social outreach chair Caragh Considine.
Julie Ferrell, campus outreach chair for the Homecoming Steering Committee, attributed this year's success to having Homecoming later than usual.
"With Homecoming being later in the year, there's more time to prepare," she said. "We begin planning in the spring semester, but collection can
"Just Food feeds about 150 to 200 families a day. We saw 4,000 unique visitors last month alone," she said.
ZOE LARSON/KANSAN
ZOE LARSON/KANSAN The Homecoming Steering Committee used a KU on Wheels bus to collect items to donate to Just Food of Douglas County.