"There's No Safety in These Systems": Centering Trans and Gender Diverse Students' Campus Climate Experiences to Prevent Sexual Violence

Transgender and gender diverse (TGD) college students experience higher rates of sexual violence (SV) than their cisgender peers; however, they report incidents of SV and seek campus-based support services less often (Cantor et al., 2020). In response to climate survey data on our campus, we sought to bring TGD student perspective to noted SV disparities and solution building. We conducted focus groups with 21 TGD-identifying university students to gain insight into their experiences and perceptions of campus SV prevention and response infrastructure. We analyzed and coded transcripts using iterative inductive and deductive approaches to identify major themes. We shared themes with focus group participants through a member-checking survey and held a community meeting with TGD students and campus and community service providers to ensure the adequacy and accuracy of these summaries. Discussions with participants emphasized the dominant role of campus climate in eroding TGD students' trust that SV reports would be taken seriously or supports would competently meet their needs. Participants underscored that SV prevention efforts will remain ineffective and irrelevant for them until they feel safe, valued, seen, and heard on campus. These findings may be understood through a lens of institutional betrayal (Smith & Freyd, 2014), which stresses the ways harmful systems and practices often reinforce and repeat traumas associated with marginalization and discrimination, such as that experienced by TGD students in cis- and heterocentric environs. TGD students' unique experiences of SV demand institutional competence and prioritization to decrease rates of SV and increase student access to support.