Kaeden Kass, Transgender Miami University Student, Files Complaint After R.A. Position Denied In Male Dorm

Transgender Student Files Complaint After Being Denied R.A. Post In Men's Dorm

An Ohio-based transgender college student has filed a discrimination complaint against his university for assigning him to a women's dormitory for the coming year.

As the Associated Press is reporting, Miami University student Kaeden Kass claims school officials are ignoring his gender identity by not allowing him to serve as a residential assistant in an all-male dorm.

"I'm a male-identified person," Kass told WLWT-TV. "I have to fight for my identity every day, and it's just exhausting and it's frustrating, and it hinders my mental health, I think."

Kass filed a charge of discrimination with the Office of Equity and Equal Opportunity against three Miami University officials -- Susan Mosley-Howard, dean of students; Gerald Olsen, director of the Office of Residence Life; and Robin Parker, general counsel for the Office of the President, according to the Middletown Journal.

"I have no problem living with women," Kass, a sophomore from Cincinnati who plans to have a career in both music and advocacy, told the Journal. "But the problem comes when I’m in this space that is deemed all-female. And so naturally I’m assumed to be female. And so my identity becomes invisible."

Officials have been mostly tight-lighted about the case thus far, but university spokesperson Claire Wagner has been quoted as saying that Miami University "takes any complaints of discrimination seriously. We offer on-campus housing specifically for transgender students. We have been doing it on a case-by-case basis.”

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