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Cornell University

Student & Campus Life

Life Transitions Closet offers gender-affirming support

A person tries on a jacket in front of a mirror.
Morgan Irons, doctoral student, tries on a jacket at the Life Transitions Closet in the LGBT Resource Center.

When Yue Zhang, a doctoral student in biophysics, arrived at Cornell in 2022, she was surprised to find that the university didn’t have a gender-affirming clothing stockroom like the one she frequented as an undergraduate at University of Texas, Dallas.

“That’s how I built up a lot of my feminine wardrobe,” said Zhang, who identifies as transgender. “I have all these things that I got thanks to the kindness of others, so I thought it’d be really nice if others could have that as well.”

Last year Zhang saw a call for submissions for the Belonging at Cornell Grant Program, which supports projects that are inclusive of, or directly addressing, concerns of one or more communities historically underrepresented on Cornell’s campus. The efforts eventually led to the Life Transitions Closet (LTC,) a donation-based campus resource offering free, gender-affirming clothes to queer, trans and nonbinary students going through a transitory period.

Read the full article on the Cornell Chronicle.