TTNS 2016 Starts Today At Texas A&M Central Texas

The 8th annual Texas Transgender Nondiscrimination Summit kicks off today, and this is the seventh (and seventh consecutive one) I have attended.  

Ever since I attended my first TTNS held on the Rice University campus mere weeks after I returned home from Louisville, I have had the pleasure of watching this event grow.  I've not only taught seminars at it, this year I was asked to be one of the two keynote speakers for 2016.

My activist mentor Judge Phyllis Frye will be the other TTNS 2016 keynoter.

The summit has grown so much that this year's TTNS event will break the record set last year at UT-Dallas.  For those of you in the Centex area, you have time to roll up or down I-35 and join us on the Texas A&m Central Texas campus in Killeen

It's a testament to the vision of its founding executive director Josephine Tittsworth that it has grown from a Houston centric event to one that for the last several years is eagerly courted by colleges and universities across the Lone Star State.and has been held in San Marcos, Dallas, Killeen this year and next year on the Stephen F. Austin University campus in Nacogdoches.

The TTNS has had a major impact on education in Texas.   We have gone from three colleges and universities that have trans friendly nondiscrimination policies to over 30.

Several Texas school districts also have trans friendly policies as a result of Texas Transgender Nondiscrimination Summit's attendees taking the lessons they learned here and making those changes happen in the own parts of the Lone Star State.

And it's also interesting to note that it is happening at a time when the Obama Administration has emphatically stated that we have the human rights back of transgender people and issued a DOE/DOJ Dear Colleague Letter that dovetails nicely into the work TTNS has been doing since 2009.

And TTNS is proud to play its part in doing so.in the Lone Star State.

I'm also looking forward to doing my part to help that education process along, starting today.