by Nikki Serapio, Manager, New Media Strategies

Imagine that a school administrator fired a teacher for being a woman. Imagine that this administrator publicly defended their decision by citing their personal objections to women being teachers in any capacity.

Probably, this kind of bigotry would become national news right away. And that's why I think it's sad that no major news media have headlined the story of Dr. Rachel Tudor, a professor at Southeastern Oklahoma State University who was recently fired because she is a transgender woman.

Tudor is a highly accomplished educator, writer, and scholar in the humanities. She has ten peer-reviewed journal articles to her name. Year after year, she has helped organize Southeastern's only regularly scheduled academic conference. In the write-up for Tudor's latest peer assessment, a fellow professor called her teaching "inspirational."

Yet, when her colleagues formally recommended Tudor for tenure last year, this recommendation was summarily rejected by Southeastern's administration — without explanation. And that wasn't the end of it. Here's Tudor in her own words:

"...[Southeastern] policy recognizes faculty as the best judges of who should be retained, promoted, or let go. As a matter of fact, our policy states that the president is obliged to honor faculty recommendations unless the president shows that there is a "compelling reason" or that "exceptional circumstances" exist for rejecting the recommendation of faculty. The president failed to cite any evidence that remotely meets the criteria required. This year, the interim vice president for academic affairs, Doug McMillan, issued a memo prohibiting me from applying for tenure. This is quite unusual — as far as I know — unprecedented...I filed a grievance with the Faculty Appellate Committee and they unanimously ruled that I should be allowed to apply for tenure and promotion. The Faculty Senate passed a resolution respectfully requesting the president, Larry Minks, to honor the decision of the FAC. The president chose to eschew the judgment of the FAC as well as the Faculty Senate's request. He denied me the opportunity to apply for tenure and promotion, and issued a letter stating my contract [which ends May 2011] for next semester will not be renewed "without cause."

This all stinks of discrimination. Southeastern's administrators singled out Tudor. In a university memo, they blocked her and only her from re-applying for tenure, but offered no job performance-related reason for this targeted preemption. And then, after Tudor enlisted the support of her colleagues and immediate superiors — who all agreed that she should be duly recognized and given tenure — the President responded...by firing her.

The facts of the situation indicate blatant anti-transgender discrimination. And while we're still waiting on Southeastern President Larry Minks and VP Doug McMillan to explain themselves to the press, there's this apparent corroboration: according to The Daily O'Collegian, a college newspaper in Oklahoma, McMillan reportedly stated "that Tudor's lifestyle 'offends his Baptist beliefs.' "

Oklahoma has no state law on the books explicitly forbidding anti-transgender discrimination. This represents an enormous failure on the part of Oklahoma's legislators. At the same time, we are dealing with a larger national problem here — a long-running epidemic of gross injustice when it comes to how we treat transgender people in this country. As of May 2011, only 13 states and the District of Columbia and only 134 cities and counties in America have transgender-inclusive nondiscrimination laws in place. According to the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce, that means more than 165 million people — well over half of the U.S. population — live in areas where it is legally permissible to terminate an employee on the basis of their gender identity.

Politicians on the state and federal levels aren't the only ones to blame for such rampant injustice, but they must own this problem — because ultimately they are the ones that need to fix it. In a recent survey of 6,450 transgender and gender non-conforming participants, published by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and aptly titled "Injustice at Every Turn," a staggering 41% of respondents said that they have attempted suicide, compared to 1.6% of the general population. The findings indicate that many of these people were affected by a job that they lost because of outright bias. Which in turn makes another thing clear: preventing workplace discrimination against transgender people isn't merely about protecting someone's wages and professional livelihood. It's also a matter of saving lives.

Last month, transgender issues did receive national attention when a young transgender woman named Crissy Lee Polis was viciously beaten after using the women's bathroom at a McDonald's in Baltimore, Maryland. The entire attack was caught on camera, which must have been a big factor in many news outfits' decisions to broadcast this story: hypothetically, if there had been no video, and if the police had only reported this crime by logging it in their daily blotter, I'm sure this story would not have received the attention that it deserved.

Ultimately, whether it is outright assault or relatively hidden workplace discrimination or harassment, each and every instance of injustice against transgender people must be met head-on. There is no excuse for the law not to respect the civil rights of transgender people in the same way that it formally protects the rights of, for instance, ethnic minorities.

In the case of Dr. Rachel Tudor, the next steps are clear. She should get her job back. And if anyone should be fired, it should be the school administrators. Their bigotry is a stain on Southeastern Oklahoma State University.

Want to help? Dr. Tudor asks that you do the following:

What can be done now? Write to the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education and let them know of your dissatisfaction with the administration's abuse of power. This is about preserving our fundamental democratic values in our public universities — respecting fair play, due process, and equality. Please request that the Governing Board of the Regional System of Oklahoma direct Larry Minks to respect the decision of the Faculty Appellate Committee, honor the resolution passed by the Faculty Senate, and renew Dr. Rachel Tudor's contract. Contact info: Sheridan McCaffree, Executive Director, Regional University System of Oklahoma, 3555 NW 58th St, Suite 320, OKC, OK 73112; 405-942-8817; email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .