Undue insensitivity

To the Editor:

In an earnest effort to report on the concerns of transgender students at Penn -- particularly pertaining to implementation of the University's policy of nondiscrimination on the basis of gender identity -- The Daily Pennsylvanian has fallen into the same unfortunate traps as many other publications and seriously alienated members of the community in the process.

I was asked to refer a transgender Penn student to a DP reporter so that issues concerning implementation of the "gender identity" clause could be associated with and commented upon by a community member affected by it. In the interview, the student I located agreed to provide details of his personal life under the assumption that they would serve as background and edification for the reporter, not for publication. What appeared on the front page of the newspaper ("After sex change, grad feels like a normal man," DP, 4/1/05) was (as explained to me) a "profile" of the student. It bore two offensive and sensationalistic headlines and contained many personal, even prurient, details, including some that risked exposing the student's identity and breaching his privacy. Neither the term "profile" nor the concept was ever mentioned to me or to the student before publication.

A second, smaller piece regarding the policy's implementation appeared elsewhere in the paper ("Transgender advocates look for signs of Penn's effort," DP, 4/1/05), with hardly any connection established between the two articles. This arrangement was entirely different from the advance plan understood and agreed to by the student and by me.

To make matters worse, information in the second article was mistakenly associated with Erin Cross, LGBT Center associate director. The reporter and his editor indicated to me following publication that this information was obtained from the Internet and then incorrectly attributed to Ms. Cross, who had talked to the reporter about similar subject matter with the clear and acknowledged understanding that this conversation was "off the record."

While I salute the paper's efforts to cover the transgender and other minority communities at Penn, extra sensitivity regarding the subject matter, precise clarity about journalistic arrangements and, in instances such as the one at hand, special caution to protect confidentiality are required when writing about them. Regrettably, such guidelines were not followed in the recent articles.

Bob Schoenberg

The author is director of the LGBT Center at Penn

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.