‘We are not anomalous’: KPU study on 2SLGBTQIA+ student experiences strives for institutional change

As Destiny Justice Lang turned 20 years old, the life they knew was pulled out from underneath them. 

It was June 2024, and Lang had been enjoying the beginning of the summer season by serving as a camp leader for the University of British Columbia’s CampOUT, a summer camp for queer youth. 

A fellow camp leader and friend of Lang’s came to spend some time at their house. Lang says their mother was showing irritation towards them, which later transformed into anger. Just as Lang was heading off to school one Monday morning with their friend, their mother kicked them out of the house, they say. 

“She had a white piece of paper saying, ‘Under my roof, you’re a woman, you’re my daughter,’” Lang says. “She got really mad and told me, ‘My house, my rules. If your queer friends understand you so much, go live with them.’” 

Lang identifies as queer, non-binary, and transgender and comes from a family of first-generation Chinese immigrants. As a third-year fashion design and technology student at Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Wilson School of Design, they juggle a busy course schedule, which was amplified by experiencing homelessness. 

Being cut off from their family, Lang had to learn their rights as a tenant to not “get exploited by greedy landlords” and sort out student loans so they could continue their education without financial support from their family. Lang is also a student with an invisible disability and had to self-advocate to medical professionals to gain support and access grants available for disabled students. 

Navigating and learning about all these supports added to the stress of being in a full-time fashion design cohort program, where if Lang were to fail or withdraw from one class, their graduation would be delayed by a year. 

“A lot was at stake. It was scary and stressful with all these logistical problems I had to solve.”

From June to August, Lang stayed in four different households. From September to December, they moved between six households. Lang has now found stable, long-term housing and says they are in the process of reconciling with their mother. 

“I have some family that I didn’t reach out a lot to because I was worried about what they would say or how they would view me, even though they weren’t directly involved in kicking me out,” Lang says. 

Lang is one of many post-secondary students in British Columbia who face adversity due to their gender identity and sexuality. A team of researchers at KPU have been leading a study on the educational experiences of 2SLGBTQIA+ post-secondary students, and their findings show that queer and gender-diverse students lack support and resources, among other disparities. 

Led by KPU criminology instructor Tara Lyons, the study got its start following the results of a late 2020 KPU student satisfaction survey. The survey found a host of negative health and well-being outcomes among trans and gender-diverse students, including inequities and disparities in inclusion on campus and in classrooms, food security, and housing security. 

“At that time, we decided to undertake a qualitative exploratory study amongst 2SLGBTQIA+ KPU students,” Lyons says, adding there were two research students who joined the study and conducted 43 KPU-specific interviews. 

“We could really explore what was going on, and there was a whole range of findings that came out of that exploratory study. From there, we built a much more robust [study] methodologically and through our research team.” 

The study has since expanded beyond KPU by gathering research and learning about students’ lived experiences from six other teaching-focused institutions in the Lower Mainland: University of Fraser Valley, Vancouver Community College, British Columbia Institute of Technology, Langara College, Douglas College, and Capilano University. 

Lyons is working with several undergraduate student research assistants at KPU to lead the study, including Liam Ruel, Camille Bédard, Kai Barcellos Luna, and Lang. Luka Wall, manager of institutional research at KPU’s Office of Planning and Accountability, is also involved in the study as a volunteer. 

The research team launched a mixed-methods study, which started by sending out an online survey that saw 337 participants, most of whom were KPU students and students from the other participating post-secondaries who studied within their respective faculties of arts.

The survey collected answers from 2SLGBTQIA+ domestic and international students with diverse ethnicities, religions, disabilities and conditions, employment rates, food security, areas of residency, and substance use habits, among other factors. 

They also led 17 KPU-centred focus groups with 55 participants to discuss topics including being an international student, being a student with disabilities, studying trades, and studying at KPU in general.

In terms of outness and visibility, the survey found 49 per cent of respondents are not comfortable sharing this information with others, while 46 per cent are afraid of homophobic and transphobic reactions. It also found that most students don’t feel part of a 2SLGBTQIA+ community at school, with only 19 per cent of participants having accessed student-run clubs, supports, and events for queer and gender-diverse students. 

For students of colour, 48 per cent found it was hard to make 2SLGBTQIA+ friends who share their ethnic background, and 30 per cent of international students felt isolated among their queer and gender-diverse peers. 

Due to fear of facing homophobia and transphobia, 17 per cent of respondents avoided getting to know their classmates, 17 per cent avoided campus washrooms, and 12 per cent changed the way they dressed. 

A majority of survey respondents have heard someone use insults related to 2SLGBTQIA+ students on campus as well as racist and ableist comments, and 67 per cent reported having heard someone make a joke about queer and gender-diverse people. Only 60 per cent of respondents said they feel comfortable reporting an incident.

Just over 80 per cent of respondents felt they had instructors who cared about their well-being. A majority of respondents also felt their instructors were supportive of their sexuality and gender identity.  

One-third of BIPOC students reported hearing an instructor make racist or culturally insensitive comments, and some students said instructors have misgendered trans students, used outdated language, shared incorrect and biased information, and not acted on homophobia or transphobia in the classroom. 

When asked about whether decision-makers at their school did a good job of supporting 2SLGBTQIA+ students, most students responded neutrally. Just over 70 per cent of students reported feeling like they have the support they need to be successful at school. However, 51 per cent also shared they struggled to get all of their course work done. 

Initial recommendations and points of action that came from this survey included increasing 2SLGBTQIA+ student spaces and events on campuses, training employees to work with queer and gender-diverse students, and creating more all-gender washrooms, among others. 

“A group that really stood out was the amount of students reporting either witnessing or experiencing discrimination [and] harassment,” Ruel says. “There were also a lot of really big findings around community …. It really emphasized the importance of community and what still needs to be done to create community on campus.”

Lyons adds that transphobia, homophobia, racism, and ableism are rampant not only in post-secondary experiences but in all other areas of life. 

“We also asked students … questions around substance use and why they [may have] used. We have questions also around support for family,” she says. 

The research team has now moved onto a more qualitative focus for their mixed-methods study by expanding the focus groups, most of which are being led by the student research assistants. The focus groups aim to tackle topics of intersectionality, including trans students with autism, queer and gender-diverse international students, and students with disabilities. 

These specific focus group topics allow the research team to delve deeper into the lives of students.

“We wanted to get a broad picture of 2SLGBTQIA+ student experiences, as well as how their non-education-related contexts and identities influenced those experiences,” Luka Wall wrote in an email statement to The Runner. 

Barcellos Luna is a creative writing major at KPU who identifies as a queer trans-masculine person. Working as a research student on the study, Barcellos Luna is leading focus groups that explore how instructors’ support towards students’ gender and sexuality influences their well-being in an academic setting, as this was a common theme in the initial research findings. 

Barcellos Luna came to Canada from Brazil in 2022 and says he hasn’t faced many barriers during their time as a student at KPU. He thinks this may be largely due to the fact that they came to KPU with their legal sex already changed on documents and found KPU’s Pride Centre within weeks of being in Canada, which supported him. 

“One of the main institutional barriers at KPU I hear is about gender,” Barcellos Luna says. 

They add the main challenge he’s faced while in Canada has been the medical aspect of their transition. 

“I started hormone therapy in Brazil, but I needed to continue here, and navigating the medical system was a nightmare,” he says. 

“It is already difficult for trans people to get hormones and find a family doctor that prescribes it, but in my case, there was also the added challenge of not knowing how this medical system works because it’s completely different from Brazil.” 

Barcellos Luna says there seems to be a lack of knowledge around how international students can go about receiving gender-affirming care in Canada, and that no one was able to direct him or explain what they needed to do. 

“This lack of information is also at KPU. I couldn’t find anyone at KPU that could help me with it,” they say, adding the Pride Centre was the only outlet that helped him understand the Canadian medical system and point them in a general direction. 

Other challenges Barcellos Luna faced at the time include not having transition costs covered by health insurance. 

In fall 2024, the Kwantlen Student Association began offering gender-affirming health-care coverage to students as part of its health and dental plan, provided by Gallivan, a student health and wellness company. The initiative to implement this coverage was spearheaded by Lang, who served as the KSA’s queer students representative from 2022 to 2024. 

Through their work with the KPU research team, Barcellos Luna says the gaps 2SLGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and disabled students face are very clear and the reason little change is made comes down to it being considered as not important. 

“I feel like we are past the point of ‘lack of information’ and ‘we didn’t know about that’ to be a valid excuse,” they say. 

“What I really like about this research is that we gathered a lot of student recommendations because I feel that is lacking …. I think a lot of people who make these decisions don’t necessarily have a direct contact with students from the institution to find out what they still need, what would make them feel more comfortable inside a classroom, or what barriers they are facing.” 

Lang is also running focus groups to explore queer KPU students’ experiences with housing and financial security. They are using their lived experiences to create questions but also to encourage participants to answer in a way that shapes recommendations that will ultimately help students. 

“[The research] showcases how the 2SLGBTQIA+ community is not anomalous and our diverse experiences intersect with one another to really affect how we navigate the world around us, education, and other parts of our lives,” Lang says. 

“You get to see not just the individual problems, but also systemic issues …. There is still a lot that needs to be done to help queer students have an equitable experience, not just as students, but also as people — and we need to talk about it.”

The study is an ongoing and evolving project, and the research team is working to analyze and use the information they’ve gathered to create recommendations for post-secondaries to implement. They also plan to present their findings to educational institutions at conferences. 

“We don’t want to present this information only in a negative light,” Lyons says. 

“There’s still lots of tremendous joy and wonderfulness in queer and trans students’ lives and communities, but we absolutely, especially with the focus groups, were able to get really in depth about why, and the recommendations we bring forth are driven directly from the 

participants.” 

Ruel adds the study gives them a chance to bring students’ experiences together in a way where they can present them to the people who are making decisions, something Wall wrote everyone at an institution can play a part in. 

“For a project like this, it’s really all about seeing how we can put the results to use for concrete change and improvements for queer and trans students,” they wrote. 

“I think that, speaking broadly, a clear finding from the study is that everyone at an institution has a role to play in this, whether that’s students, instructors, service providers, or higher-level decision-makers.”

The research study has been funded by KPU’s Student Research and Innovation Grant program. For more information about the project, visit www.bit.ly/kpulgbtstudy.