More Fun with the Trans-Line: William and Mary Students Elect a Gender-Queer as Homecoming Queen
A friend and fellow William and Mary alum emailed me earlier today, responding to my earlier post on the scariness of messing with the gender line, and informing me that our alma mater had just elected a self-identified gender-queer as Homecoming Queen. Read all about it, right here in the school’s daily paper, The Flat Hat.
The student, one Jessee Vasold, is apparently a biological male who prefers not to identify as of either gender, but whose gender is nonetheless seen as sufficiently female for the students to have picked “zir” (the pronoun Vasold prefers to “him” or “her”) as Queen, not King.
Go, Tribe! The students, who apparently only regained the right to cast direct votes for these silly positions this year, likely have the governing Board of Visitors in a tizzy, already thinking about how they can prevent a similar trans-gression from taking place again. (Go to the Board’s site, and you’ll find men with III’s after their names — which, if I had to guess, wouldn’t usually be a number associated with much trans-contact. On the other hand, Bruce Hornsby’s wife (an alumna) is also a member.)
Oh, to be present at tomorrow’s Homecoming parade! Atop all of the parade watchers’ smart outfits, mouths will yawn agape and eyes will pop, cartoon-style, out of their sockets, as the college-donation-stopping Vasold floats past. (One commenter on the Flat Hat’s site made this point — angrily — about the spigot shutting off. I think, though, that most alums will get over it.)
Were the students being supportive, or ironic? Both, I’d say, but the whole thing is delightfully performative in the wise-guy tradition that I found appealing as a student. (Jon Stewart is the contemporary example of a W&M-educated smart aleck, but he has nothing on Thomas Jefferson, the Know-it-All who mooned the College by founding the competing UVA.) If you can’t send up Homecoming, what can you have fun with?
4 Responses to “More Fun with the Trans-Line: William and Mary Students Elect a Gender-Queer as Homecoming Queen”
October 24th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
While I also enjoy the thought of mouths agape at the sight of Jessee going by on a float, I have to say that Jessee is pretty convincing as a woman. I doubt many alums who aren’t already in the know would figure out that ze was biologically a he.
October 26th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Nicely articulated John. But what are you implying about Kathy Hornsby? Or is it Bruce?! JK – their party (for the Class of ‘79) was great fun and they were very gracious in opening it up as much as they did.
Again, this is not ze’s father’s W&M. However, there will always be a lag between the diversity of any campus today and the diversity of its related governing bodies. Maybe the lag time can be decreased somewhat, but there is a factor of experience and wisdom and, unfortunately important these days, a factor of ability to support a college financially. The glass-half- full good news is that any lag indicates progress at the underlying level, where W&M has truly made great strides.
Unfortunately, the perfect storm came in 2008. The already appallingly small endowment took a hit (tho the fund did much better than most of its peers in this storm), fundraising ability takes a hit, and most damaging, the horribly mismanaged state has now taken a monstrously large, sharp and unrelenting chainsaw to W&M’s budget. In our day the state accounted for roughly half the college’s funding, while today it is only 13% – and plummeting (and we don’t even have a medical center which complex would typically make this % low). Yet the state appoints 100% of the Board of Visitor members. Isn’t this why we seceded from Britain in the 1st place – governance and taxation without representation?!
There are some very good people on the Board of Visitors who I assure you are advocating for the right things (Kathy Hornsby and John Gerdleman for two). There are apparently others who may be of different views. And then there are the legislative members who make the biggest decisions of all regarding funding. W&M is a state school, and every state school by definition is a public and political beast – highly so. Especially those schools of “import.” Private institutions have a huge advantage over their public brethren, but they too are political beasts. I’ve worked extensively over the years at Duke and UNC-CH (where I knew past prez Gene Nichol, whose W&M tenure was not as simple as it has often been presented) and “could burn off both of your ears.” How does Widener fare in this arena?
Need to put in a good word for the administration and staff of W&M. W&M is ranked as the 2nd or 3rd most efficient higher educational institution in the nation; they are doing more with less funding and fewer resources than you can imagine. They were never consistently funded much less well funded and so became a very lean machine. Now, they’ve essentially been knee capped. Yet on most any facet of the college you can see, there has been great improvement and accomplishment (with huge room for improvement obviously). Unfortunately, the ONLY hope for the future of W&M is private funding, which has the effect of decoupling it to some extent from politics (as well as inappropriate commercialism), allowing certain specific initiatives to proceed and be accomplished that otherwise would not.
In that regard, I’ll put in a good word for the Foundation of W&M. This is a bigger body devoted to the vitality of W&M that can be enhanced by private activity, mostly giving and fund raising but hopefully also wisdom and good perspective. Horrifyingly, I am on the Foundation Board. Not surprisingly, there is a breadth of perspective but as far as I can tell, little if any insincere or undedicated folks. In fact there are some incredible people on that board, present company excluded. There is a lag in representation we are trying hard to rectify.
Lastly, there is the alumni body. W&M recently did a study of all classes and noted a distinct degradation in alumni sentiment among the 70’s era alum. I was once one of those dissatisfied campers. You’ll recall I was neither conservative nor Virginian then (nor Democrat or Republican). Nor am I now. It was only through opening my eyes and mind, re-familiarizing myself with the school, seeing the progress, the challenges and the opportunities. And even then only very reluctantly agreed to get involved. I’d urge all alums to get involved there in whatever areas your passions burn!
October 26th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
These comments are helpful. Andrew ‘10, thanks for the “visual”; I did see a pic of Jessee on a newspaper’s website, but couldn’t get much of a sense from it.
Mike, your thoughful comments are much appreciated. You took this issue and did a service by speaking to much bigger questions about the place of a school like W&M in state-run systems — esp. where the state runs, but doesn’t much support them.
A few years ago, I recall hearing that the school was thinking of trying to move towards some kind of more autonomous status. Is that still on the table? Can W&M do that without the state’s acquiescence? And what would it take the state to acquiesce? It seems like this kind of move could be structured in a way that would please everyone.
In PA, btw, there’s something like this in place: Penn State, U Pitt, and Temple are state-supported, but not fully “state.” What this means in terms of operation, funding, and governance, I don’t know. But their model might be worth researching if there are thoughts of doing…something about W&M’s precarious position.
I can’t close without appreciation for your willingness to give of your time (and likely, treasure, too) in serving on the Foundation Board. It’s important work and the Board’s lucky to have someone with your combination of intelligence and wit on it. Now I have to stop before I begin weeping…
October 26th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Yours is a great question John. Unfortunately the time to go private was many years ago. The biggest hurdle now would be recreating the physical plant. While there would not be any remotely higher or best use for that plant than the College of W&M, there is no way that could be re-created privately in any economically viable way. The state knows they have “us” over a barrel, but they are too ignorant/foolish to realize the incredible asset they have and that they could leverage to every constituent in the state’s benefit. A second huge impediment is the insufficient and relatively paltry state of private funding that W&M has. Heck, even favored son UVA (indeed a mooning by TJ) only has ~ 6% state funding (tho roughly equivalent to W&M’s factoring in their Med Center effect on this) but also enjoys a much larger endowment and level of support, and they remain public. But even they are going quasi-private in some of their professional schools. For better or worse, schools with strong professional – especially business programs, both undergrad and grad – tend to enjoy significantly greater funding than schools like W&M, who produce and are known more for their loser teaching alum, JK! Two of the great developments @ W&M are the spanking new impressive B School (mostly privately funded), and the new School of Education (that the state approved and committed significant resources toward). Thanks for the thanks John, but W&M has given me far more than I’ve given it. Hopefully I can catch up at some point…
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