photo by: Submitted

A banner that has become the subject of a student housing code violation is pictured at KU's Grace Pearson Scholarship Hall.

At the University of Kansas’ Grace Pearson Scholarship Hall, banners have been hung. Windows have been screwed shut. Lights have been turned off to evade security cameras.

Someone even wore something called a “morph suit” — a superhero-caped version — to conceal their identity.

But these aren’t fun and games happening in KU student housing.

Rather, residents are protesting a previously-reported decision by KU administrators to end a policy that allows transgender students to room with someone of their same gender, even if the two roommates don’t share the same biological sex.

And they are trying to do so without getting identified for fear of having their KU student housing leases amended or revoked. A KU student housing leader earlier this month did warn all residents of Grace Pearson Scholarship Hall that they were running the risk of being transferred to another facility, or could have their student leases for the next school year terminated, if they continue to hang the banners.

“The ongoing disregard of Housing and University policy by student(s) living in Grace Pearson Scholarship Hall must stop immediately,” an April 11 letter to residents from Sarah Waters, executive director of KU’s housing and residence life, said before listing a host of administrative actions KU could take against the students.

For now, the banners have come down, but the fears inside the scholarship hall have gone up, Kristopher Long, vice president of the hall, told the Journal-World. He said some residents are experiencing an “extreme level” of stress that KU will take action requiring them to move or make other housing arrangements for the next school year.

“Some residents tell me that every time they get an email their heart rate goes up and they feel a little bit sick,” Long said.

photo by: Submitted

A banner is pictured at KU’s Grace Pearson Scholarship Hall.

Banner back-and-forth

On Feb. 26, the Journal-World reported on a campus protest by dozens of students upset with a decision by KU Student Housing to end next school year a voluntary room assignment program known as “gender inclusive assignments.”

Elimination of the program, for example, would mean that a transgender woman in Grace Pearson would not have the option of rooming with a female student. Instead, the transgender woman would have to room with a male, so that the sex of the two roommates match. KU officials have said the change is the result of a concern about the bathroom situation at Grace Pearson. The living units in question are served by a multi-toilet bathroom with a single shower stall. KU leaders have said that arrangement — a multi-sex, community bathroom — doesn’t comply with International Building Code standards.

After that February protest, students hung a banner from Grace Pearson, 1335 Louisiana Street, proclaiming “We Are All Jayhawks.” That banner hung for about a week before crews with the facility arm of KU Student Housing removed the banner.

At that point, a banner back-and-forth was on.

“Every night we would put up another one, and they would take it down,” said Long, who has lived in Grace Pearson for three years and will graduate in May.

photo by: Shawn Valverde

Student protesters demonstrate outside of KU’s Strong Hall on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025.

Long said the facility crews originally would arrive in the afternoon to remove the day’s banner. A new banner would be hung at about midnight. Then, facility crews began arriving first thing of a morning, Long said.

One student would make a heroic, daily sacrifice for the cause — at least in the realm of student schedules.

“He got up at seven in the morning every day to film them taking the banner down,” Long said.

Then, the notices of student conduct began arriving via email. Long said there have been 30 notices of student conduct issued to a mix of Grace Pearson residents and residents of other student housing facilities who have participated in solidarity.

The letters alerted students that their actions hadn’t been anonymous.

“We discovered the security camera is definitely working,” Long said.

So, tactics began to change.

Some residents began to hang banners outside the windows of an upper floor, with all the lights turned off so that the camera would have difficulty in capturing images of those doing the hanging.

Soon thereafter, facility personnel screwed shut the windows in the building, Long said. A spokeswoman with KU said clarified to the Journal-World that the windows in a single community room of the building were secured because students were creating a safety issue by hanging out the windows.

photo by: Submitted

A morph suit is shown in this photo.

Next came the “morph” suits, which are a type of one-piece Spandex outfit that covers a person from head to toe. The nature of the material allows a person to see out of the suit, but the covering masks most identifying features of an individual.

People would hang banners wearing those suits, security cameras be damned. For good measure, some of the suits included a rainbow-colored cape.

Then, the April 11 letter came, and it included the strongest language yet about the administrative actions students were facing.

“Given the community’s collective failure to abide by Housing policies, contracts and housing assignments for 2025-26 will also be reviewed, and current residents may have their contracts cancelled or be reassigned to other scholarship halls or housing facilities,” the letter states.

Upon receipt of that letter, Long said most students decided “we have taken this as far as we could,” and the banner hanging ceased.

photo by: Shawn Valverde

Protesters display a banner outside of KU’s Strong Hall on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025.

Safety vs speech

Now, Long said he and others are trying to raise awareness that what KU is doing is a violation of the students’ right to free speech. The KU code violation that Long and several others have been cited for violating, he said, is labeled “Dissemination of Information.” That code provision spells out that it is illegal to post signs or distribute information in KU student housing complexes without prior approval from a KU official.

Long contends there are signs in windows of many a dorm room, and innocuous banners that hang for days at other residence halls. He said KU’s enforcement of the dissemination of information code provision has been inconsistent. He said the “extreme” enforcement at Grace Pearson shows that KU is doing so because of the content of the banners, which would be a violation of the First Amendment.

Long also noted that none of the banners contained profanity or other such language, as students intentionally decided to not give KU that reason to force the banners’ removal.

KU spokeswoman Erinn Barcomb-Peterson told the Journal-World via email that Long’s assertions aren’t accurate. She said the university has a long history of notifying dorm residents that they can’t hang outward-facing signs, even from their room windows.

“In fact, staff are directed to pay attention to window displays as part of their routine monitoring of buildings for the very reason that enforcement might be consistent,” Barcomb-Peterson said.

The university contends it is taking action against the banners based on safety reasons, not speech concerns.

The April 11 letter noted that the hanging of banners had created some damage to painted surfaces, but “most importantly, the person(s) hanging the banner have engaged in behavior that is unsafe while standing on railings or furniture, accessing roofs, and/or leaning out open windows,” the letter stated.

Long contends the hanging of the banners didn’t create legitimate safety concerns. He said the original actions were limited to tying the banners to a pair of pillars on the building’s porch. However, Long did acknowledge that he got on the patio roof on one occasion to further secure the banner, but such activity wasn’t the norm.

“That was my bad,” he said.

photo by: Shawn Valverde

Student protesters demonstrate outside of KU’s Strong Hall on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025.

Compromise conversations

All the while, there hasn’t been much movement on the policy change that sparked the banners. KU still intends to eliminate the gender inclusive room assignment program next year.

Long said the change will be damaging for transgender students because it will make an already stressful environment — dorm life — even more stressful. That’s because the gender inclusive room assignment program served as an assurance that a roommate was comfortable living with a transgender student. The program was voluntary, and each participant signed an agreement as part of their lease that they knew they may be living with a roommate whose biological sex is different than theirs. That advance knowledge may not be the case without the program.

KU, however, will have at least one other housing facility — a portion of KK Amini Hall — that will use the gender inclusive room assignment system. That hall has individual bathrooms, and thus the community bathroom is not an issue. Students, however, have worried that KK Amini Hall won’t have enough gender inclusive rooms available to meet demand for the program.

Long said students have proposed a compromise at Grace Pearson that would involve changing the status of the community bathroom in question from gender neutral to a restroom that is assigned for use by a specific gender. That would result in that floor of Grace Pearson not having a bathroom for both men and women, but he said whichever sex is lacking a bathroom could simply walk up a flight of stairs to use the bathroom on that floor. He said he thinks students would tolerate the inconvenience, if it meant the gender inclusive assignment program could be saved.

However, Long said the students have been unsuccessful in having any dialogue with university leaders about the proposal. He said he believes students also would be fine with changing the name of the program from gender inclusive assignments to something like the Co-Ed Housing program, if KU leaders think that would be more politically palatable.

“We are aware of the political situation,” Long said in reference to the Trump administration attempting to cancel large amounts of federal grants over diversity, equity and inclusion policies on campuses. “We don’t want KU to lose funding.”

One other KU group — the All Scholarship Hall Council — is taking a different approach to force KU administration to keep the gender inclusive policy. The student organization passed a resolution on Monday night, that among other things, calls for all scholarship halls to prepare to send a message to past residents of the halls urging them to no longer donate to the KU Endowment Association. The resolution stops short of directing the halls to send that letter immediately, but rather to do so if KU student housing officials don’t agree to further meet on and study the gender inclusive issue.