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Student Success Initiative

In 2012, the Washington State Student Services Commission (WSSSC) supported a Student Task Force initiative to collect data pertaining to sexual orientation and gender identity at the point of registration. The process began within the Seattle Colleges District during Winter Quarter 2014. This data will allow our Colleges to better serve our students and to continue to design and develop programs and services that meet the needs of our diverse population.

The following questions are asked at the point of registration and are optional.

  • What is your sexual orientation? (This question refers to a person’s emotional, physical and sexual attraction and the expressions of that attraction with other individuals.)
    • Bisexual:  Refers to sexual and romantic desire between members of the same sex, as well as members of the opposite sex.
    • Gay:  Refers to sexual and romantic desire between men; also commonly used as a term to include all LBGTQ people.
    • Lesbian:  Refers to sexual and romantic desire between women.
    • Queer:  An umbrella identity term taken by people who do not conform to heterosexual and/or gender binary norms. Also a reclaimed derogatory slur taken as a political term to unite people who are marginalized because of their nonconformity to dominant gender identities and/or heterosexuality.
    • Straight/Heterosexual:  Refers to sexual and romantic desire between members of a gender other than their own.
    • Other
    • Prefer not to answer
       
  •  What is your gender identity: (This question refers to a person’s own understanding of themselves in terms of gendered categories like man and woman, boy and girl, transgender, gender queer and many others. Refers to how a person feels inside or what they believe themselves to be.)
    • Feminine:  Characterized by or possessing qualities generally attributed to a woman.
    • Masculine:  Characterized by or possessing qualities generally attributed to a man.
      • Both feminine and masculine gender identities are ideological constructions whose human manifestations (women and men, girls and boys) are recreated in each generation according to the intermeshing requirements of social, cultural, economic, and biological necessities. People rely on cultural constructions of these to indicate their membership in their sex or gender category.
    • Androgynous:  A person appearing and/or identifying as neither man nor woman, presenting a gender of either mix or neutral.
    • Gender Neutral:  Gender identity of a person who believes policies, language, and other social institutions should avoid assigning roles to a person based on reproductive organs.
    • Transgender:  An umbrella term for those who do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.
    • Other
    • Prefer not to answer

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