On Sunday, April 6, over 90 students, staff, faculty and community members gathered in Skinner Memorial Chapel for Carleton’s first-ever trans day of visibility service. The event, which included music, storytelling and personal reflection, was an opportunity for trans students and staff to truly feel visible and have their voices heard. While the service was a resounding success, something very peculiar happened the very next day.
The following morning, campus felt a lot emptier than usual. Many simply chalked it up to Carls giving up on going to their 1as, but as the day progressed, the half-empty classrooms and a mere 85-person line at the Sayles Cafe led people to start asking questions.
“No one was in my class today, literally no one,” a GWSS professor said. “I mean, it sure looked like no one, but I could have sworn I could hear people talking. It was kind of spooky. They kept saying ‘Professor! Professor! Your shoe is untied!’ Then I just fell right over. It must have been from the shock.”
Similar stories of non-attendance were also gathered from Studio Art, Art History, Geology and Cinema and Media Studies professors.
By noon on Monday, students stumbled through hallways and around the bald spot seemingly bumping into countless people that were not there. Others reported seeing floating backpacks, computers seemingly typing themselves and copious amounts of dinosaur stickers allegedly self-attaching to a water bottle.
Administrators did not seem to put the pieces together until alarm bells started to go off within the Office of the Chaplain. During their incredibly reasonably-timed weekly staff meeting, one student, who will take on the author’s name for anonymity, was notably absent.
“I expected for Isaac to be there before I got there, maybe even before the sun came up,” said College Chaplain Rev. Schuyler Vogel. “Then 8:30 a.m. came, and he wasn’t there. Maybe he overslept, maybe he had lost track of time when trying to read the whole Talmud in one sitting? But then I didn’t see him ALL DAY. It felt like I could hear him though…that’s when it hit me. He was visible yesterday. Today he’s invisible. That’s more than a coincidence.”
The Carleton administration attempted to take swift action, but it seems they were unable to form a meeting as they kept bumping into invisible students on the way to the conference room and eventually gave up.
“While we’ve attempted to address the problem of our transgender students losing their visibility, we’ve decided to temporarily suspend our Visibility Restoration Task Force because…it’s kind of hard to find people when you can’t see them.” President Alison Byerly told “the Carletonian.” “But we’re looking forward to seeing our valued trans students next year at trans day of visibility. Until then, I’m looking forward to … hearing them, I guess.”
