Listing the Names

Transgender Day of Remembrance is coming up, and my club is working with our campus's Gender Neutral Housing to organize a vigil.

Obviously, hate crimes are tragic whenever they occur. But now, as the day I'm going to be holding a candle and helping read the list of the names of the dead from the past year gets closer, every headline I see about violence against hits me that much harder. Shelley Hillard, a transgender teen who went missing in October and whose body was just found burned on the side of the road, is the name I found today.

I'm sorry, Shelley. I'll think of you at the vigil, and I'll try to make it an event that educates and inspires so that someday horrible things like this don't happen. You shouldn't be just a name on a list.