Queer Student Resources (QSR) cut the community organization Trans& in the fall of 2024 — a decision that some students and alumni say has left a gap in support for trans students. 

The organization provided a place where “trans students can meet with other trans students… to talk about real life issues, according to a previous version of the QSR website. The program’s weekly meetings typically consisted of a catered meal and guided discussion about trans issues.

According to QSR administrators, lowered attendance rates and QSR budget restrictions were behind the decision to cut the program. The University referred The Daily to a statement from the QSR team, which did not directly address Trans&.

“QSR is dedicated to making Stanford a place where all students, including students of all genders and sexualities, can flourish,” the statement read. It added that over the last two years, QSR began shifting its programming to be “more intersectional and intentionally welcoming of the widest range of identities, communities, and perspectives within shared spaces.”

Former Trans& regular Ava Aidala ’26 said Trans& was important because official resources are often “flawed,” and community spaces are needed to “thrive as a queer person.”

“There’s a very strong culture in the trans community of mutual care, helping each other out, because there has to be,” Aidala said. “And when those community ties are broken, that’s losing access to a lot of resources.”

According to Aidala, there was little communication about the dissolution of Trans&, leaving some trans individuals on campus feeling “confused and abandoned.” She added that the program’s end came at an especially bad time because it preceded Trump’s executive orders on gender.

“It meant that… in a period where there was a lot of heightened concern in the trans community, there was less community space,” Aidala said.

Alex, a former participant in Trans& who requested the use of a pseudonym, also spoke to the importance of Trans&. They said that  trans individuals “across the board, have a harder time with everything.”

“We’re more disabled, we’re more unemployed, we’re less educated, we have a lot more health issues than cis people on average,” they said. “Are our lives not hard enough that we can have this one moment of solace and just come together?”

Alex said that they applied to lead the program during the 2024-25 school year. Before they stepped into the role, though, QSR’s full-time staff told them the program had not garnered enough attendance to warrant continued support from University funds.

“I was a trans person who was attending every week, and I saw a lot of people come and a lot of great conversations happening and friendships being made,” Alex said. “I felt like it was like reaching its goals, but [full-time] staff seemed to not think so.”

Regardless, Alex joined QSR as a general staff member in 2024. During their first staff meeting they asked to lead Trans&, but QSR Associate Director Michael Yepez again told them that QSR did not have the budget to support the program. 

That fall, Alex organized one Trans& event — a movie night — which was the last the program hosted. Alex took an academic leave of absence that winter and was replaced by a cisgender staff member at QSR, which Alex worried reduced transgender representation on QSR’s staff.

According to Alex, QSR’s decision to end Trans& followed a pattern in which the center set up “unnecessary hoops to jump through” for the program’s student organizers. They added that QSR’s bureaucratic structure made event planning difficult when Trans& existed.

“You can’t just [host an event],” they said. “Every single step you would need to come back to [QSR staff] and get their approval.”

Aidala worries that future trans students will struggle to find community at Stanford following the program’s dissolution.

“I sort of fear for the trans students that are going to be in a campus where it is going to be even more isolating than it was for me,” Aidala said. “[But I believe] they will continue to find each other and form community spaces…Trans people are resilient.” 

The dissolution of Trans& affected both undergraduate and graduate students. Ev Nichols Ph.D. ’24 and her co-lead established a Trans& program for graduate students (Trans& grad) as a separate entity from the undergraduate Trans& group in 2023. The grad program met consistently in fall 2024, but has since been cut along with its undergraduate counterpart.

Nichols said that before she joined Trans&, she felt isolated and lacked access to queer or trans community.

“It was really great to have the opportunity to come in and start something from the ground up,” she said. Nichols added that at Trans& meetings she “did not have to feel super hyper-vigilant about how you’re being perceived by other people on Stanford’s campus.”

As a co-lead of Trans& grad, Nichols helped organize information sessions about on-campus medical care for trans students. She also coordinated advocacy to improve health services for trans students at Vaden and better disseminate information regarding trans healthcare on campus.

“From that base of community, we were able to identify other things that people needed,” Nichols said. “[My co-lead] and I would do what we can to… push [University administration] to make changes that would benefit the community.”

For Aidala, the loss of trans community spaces on campus extends beyond the termination of Trans&, constituting a “campaign against queer spaces on campus.”

She pointed to the deprioritization of cooperative houses, or co-ops, saying that these residences offer a safe space for queer students. Several of her friends, she said, realized they were trans while living at Terra. Aidala also highlighted the loss of DragFest funding. In her view, even the resources that remain feel “very uncertain.”

“It doesn’t just feel like [University administrators] really care about us,” Aidala said. “It’s more like they actively do not want queer students to have community and feel… safe on campus.”