The Trans Action Front of Occidental College (TAFOC) is a new club formed Fall 2026 to support the collective interests of transgender students at Occidental. According to founder and president of TAFOC, Tessa Taylor* (junior), the club intends to host social and charity events around transgender pride.
Taylor said she wanted transgender students at Occidental to have a dedicated community.
“It never seemed like there was a space for me on campus, and prior to [TAFOC], there [weren’t] really many LGBT-focused organizations,” Taylor said. “I wanted to start a group to help advocate for our interests so we don’t have to do things alone.”
Taylor said details for the club’s upcoming fundraising and social events are still in the works.
“We’re definitely going to have events for the [Transgender] Day of Remembrance and the Day of Visibility,” Taylor said. “We also have ideas for potentially karaoke, or movie nights, but we don’t know how it’s going to look yet.”
Nicole Smith (senior), TAFOC’s treasurer, said the club has many short and long-term goals for improving the transgender student experience at Occidental. According to Smith, Occidental’s faculty and students have been friendly and supportive towards transgender individuals.
“The college is aware of trans issues; for example, if you go to the library, there’s a packet about starting hormone replacement therapy,” Smith said.
Taylor said TAFOC has material initiatives in mind directed towards transgender students on campus, including a year-round closet in the Lavender Lounge or the Intercultural Community Center.
“We need to figure out the details of setting aside a corner in there to have gender affirming clothing of as many different sizes as we can,” Taylor said. “When you’re transitioning, you have to get rid of basically your entire wardrobe, and [costs] can add up pretty fast.”
According to Taylor, TAFOC plans to tackle issues such as gender-neutral restroom access, transgender healthcare accessibility and policies beyond the campus. Smith said the club found the number and placement of gender-neutral restrooms across buildings on campus to be inconsistent.
“[We] would be advocating for more gender-neutral bathrooms because the college already has […] gone and converted single occupancy bathrooms to gender-neutral, so it’s not impossible for them to do,” Smith said. “The Hameetman Science Center completely lacks gender-neutral bathrooms.”
According to Smith, while beginning gender-affirming care has to be done off-campus, there are other ways Occidental can help. Smith said transgender healthcare access could be improved by allowing preexisting hormone prescriptions to be refilled at Emmons Wellness Center. Emmons currently refills prescriptions for students with ADHD.
“In my experience, there are extremely long wait times to start seeing [healthcare providers]; you end up choosing places that are pretty inconvenient to get to,” Smith said. “For example, using the Bengal Bus to give rides [to] people with [off-campus] appointments would be something that Oxy could address.”
Taylor said TAFOC hopes to be a voice for reversing anti-transgender legislation on college campuses in the future. Taylor said colleges currently follow the NCAA’s guidelines for transgender student participation in sports, in which permissions, classification and documentation can be difficult for transgender athletes to navigate.
“There’s a blanket ban [on transgender women] regardless of how long you’ve been on estrogen,” Taylor said. “It’s really messy, not to mention the room for accusations about trans status.”
Drey Chan (junior) said they are not a member of TAFOC, but knew about Taylor’s intention to launch TAFOC before the semester began. According to Chan, Occidental is a place where they were able to explore their identity and express themselves in ways they did not know or could not have done in their hometown of Hong Kong.
“Every day I’m still growing and meeting other trans people, I’m like, ‘I didn’t know you could be trans in this way’, so it’s really empowering,” Chan said. “Being able to be friends with other trans people is great because I could talk about the experience of being trans with them.”
Chan said they are not part of explicitly queer organizations on campus, but attend queer events often, lived in the queer Themed Living Community and named Oxy BlackPines Rugby and Glee Club as queer-inclusive organizations.
“Rugby is pretty queer; at the end of every training session, we sit in a circle and reintroduce ourselves with names and pronouns, which really made me feel comfortable being here at Oxy, because people can change their names or pronouns whenever,” Chan said. “People introduce their pronouns when introducing themselves, so it would make me feel like it’s a normalized thing.”
Taylor said while TAFOC is in its infancy, she hopes the club will become a pillar for transgender rights and activism while pushing for change at Occidental and beyond.
“Strengthening the communities we have […] is vital for our own sake,” Taylor said. “Adapt and manage, then use [TAFOC] as an activism base to push back, and hopefully start undoing some of the damage that’s been done when the time is right.”
*Tessa Taylor previously wrote for The Occidental
Contact Vivian Pei at vpei@oxy.edu
