The first trans student from the University of Chile was Vitto Daniel, who enrolled this year using his social name. Thanks to the protocol that currently exists on the campus, he will be able to have his name on the course lists, as well as on the university card and other documents.
Vitto is 19 years old and socialized his identity in 2017. On 2018, he became a pre-university student and gave the PSU using his social name. He did well and was selected to study primary education pedagogy at the University of Chile.
“Starting from having taken the PSU with the social name and being one of the first people to do it, I like it. Being a pioneer is interesting. Now at registration, I was the first first-year student to do the formalization,” said to OTD Chile, and his experience has been good so far. “I didn’t have any problems, I just explained the situation to them and they understood, but most of them were young people and generally the problems are with grownups”.
After writing to the registration staff and being supported by the Gender Directorate, he hopes that everything will be done by March. For him, it was important to choose a university with policies of gender since his second option was the University of Santiago. ” I have never felt the fear that I had last year when I went to pre-university and now I know that I am going to have some support from the University.
Michel Riquelme, OTD Chile’s executive coordinator, appreciates this type of action. “We are glad that institutions like state universities finally recognize trans people’s right to identity. We hope that this process will be standardized for all the country’s educational institutions, as stipulated in the Circular 0768 of the Mineduc in Schools. The recognition of identity is a basic requirement to exercise the right to education. I studied being a trans person without my name being respected and no student should go through this anymore, the country must be fair in treatment for all”.
Traslation: Mariana Galvez y Lilly Parra.
