The University of Illinois system commits to the freedom, opportunity and dignity of its students and employees. But ensuring and promoting those freedoms and opportunities is a constant work in progress. 

In fall 2013, our campus will open Bousfield Hall, the first residence hall to offer gender-neutral housing through co-ed room designs. And recently, the Chicago campus has proposed to include sex reassignment surgery in its student health insurance plans.

The proposed $5-per-semester student fee to fund the surgeries would account for only about 8 percent of the expected $60 increase in costs for UIC’s self-funded health benefit program, CampusCare. Since the surgery would be an out-of-network benefit, it would follow a 70-30 cost structure meaning the student would cover 30 percent of the cost.  

The fee is affordable, considering the increases already expected to occur. The procedure then becomes affordable for those who want it. 

However, our own University isn’t quite up-to-par with our sister school. Gender-neutral housing may address the needs of transgender students in social spheres of life, but it does nothing to address their medical needs and concerns.

Other schools, such as Northwestern University and University of Michigan, have already adopted similar policies for their transgender students. This shouldn’t be a matter of “if,” but a matter of when our University will decide to catch up with other Big Ten schools and with our very own university system. 

Ken Thomas, student trustee of the Chicago campus, said his university is simply acknowledging and advocating the nondiscrimination policy that protects students and employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

If every student is required to pay student health service and health insurance fees, then those fees should represent every student. And just as transgender students pay fees that acknowledge the medical needs of other student demographics, heterosexual, gay and bisexual students should be obligated to do the same. Not every student will use all covered health services — but every student pays for them nonetheless. Even if you don’t use them, they become possibilities for the students who will and do take advantage of them.

Although the surgery is only estimated to benefit one student per year, that’s one student who can make use of a procedure that may have been previously unaffordable and inaccessible. It’s one student who can have a procedure that will have an impact for the rest of his or her life. Ultimately it’s not about the number of students who will take advantage of the procedure, it’s that now someone can.

The message is broader than providing transgender individuals with a single medical opportunity, it’s about providing them with a range of equal medical opportunities.

When our Urbana campus acknowledges the presence of transgender students — through the LGBT Resource Center and Pride student organization — they must continue to be recognized in other aspects of campus life. And while the University is making progress toward equally representing the diversity in its student population, we must take it as it is — a step. UIC has laid the foundation and now it’s up to the University to follow suit.