Out Spotlight

This is a very different Out Spotlight and it's not about person but a group of brothers who stepped up to help their fellow brother on his way to become a man.   Fraternities are no really know as trailblazers for LGBT rights which is what makes this story out of Emerson College so great.  And for that, the brothers of  Emerson’s Alpha Chapter of Phi Alpha Tau as our Out Spotlight.

Earlier this year, Visual & Media Arts sophomore Donnie Collins pledged as a prospective brother to Phi Alpha Tau, the nation’s oldest professional communicative arts fraternity. An Alexandria, Virginia native, Collins didn’t come out as transgender until age 17 while attending a boarding school in Windsor, Conn. Of his time in an all-girls dorm, he says in a recent interview, “They were really nice, but it was all horrible."

So far, Collins has been taking his gender transition one step at a time. Barred from using his mother’s insurance to cover any physical transitions, he has singlehandedly covered the bulk of his hormone therapy since December 2011.

“I’d go to the endocrinologist and pay hundreds of dollars out of pocket, because, of course, I didn’t have insurance of my own,” he explains.
Collins now has a college health insurance policy through Emerson, a policy, like so many others, that is trans-exclusionary. It is common practice for insurance companies to deem female-to-male breast augmentation—or top surgery—as a cosmetic plastic surgery rather than a necessity.

Collins has been raising money for the procedure for months, but it seemed that one door after another would close in his face. His petition for a trans-inclusive policy was recently denied by the college's insurance plan, and his personal Chipin fund will cease when the crowd-funding site shuts down next month.

As his options were running out, Collins’s brothers in Phi Alpha Tau have rallied together to cover some of the surgery’s cost. The brothers set up a fundraising campaign on the crowdsourcing website IndieGoGo “less to raise money, and more to tell a story,” as they wrote.  “We care deeply about each and everyone,” reads another statement on the site,  “and rely on the entire active brotherhood to stand behind any one individual when they are in need.”

The brothers' fund has already surpassed the $2,000 they initially hoped to donate, and went on to raise the $8,100 to cover the total cost of the procedure  and they kept raising more money.

Collins has been completely overwhelmed by the wave of support, admitting to have cried out of gratitude when he heard what his brothers were doing. But the thought that this is a fraternity raising money for him never even crossed his mind.



“I was just like, ‘Oh that’s such a Tau thing to do,’ and I didn’t even think it was that weird,” he says. “But then I started sending [the indiegogo link] out to people, and they were like, ‘Oh my god, that’s amazing! See, Greek Life isn’t bad; it’s amazing.’”

The brothers’ site says that they hope less to raise money with their efforts and more to spread acceptance, brotherhood, and love. “We are here... to tell a story. The story of transformation, the story of self-discovery, and the story of brotherhood.”

And what are they going to do with the extra money they raised?   They're passing it on The Jim Collins Foundation.  The Jim Collins Foundation run by Tony Ferraiolo and Dru Levasseur started it to collect donations and distribute funds for surgeries for transgender people who can’t afford them and need medical help. Basically, the more donations they get, the more donations they’re able to give out. It’s a lot like a scholarship, but instead of education funds, it’s medical and surgery funds.

 Here's Collins saying thank you to all of those who helped out and contributed to raise almost $20,000 as of last week.