{"id":16263,"date":"2015-06-15T16:02:57","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T07:02:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/?p=16263"},"modified":"2016-11-29T11:03:30","modified_gmt":"2016-11-29T02:03:30","slug":"winner-of-the-presidents-award-in-a-student-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/attention-en\/2015\/06\/15\/16263\/","title":{"rendered":"No.617 Winner of the President\u2019s Award in a student competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Diversity Waseda<\/strong><\/p>\n

Satoko Itsumura
\nFifth-year, School of Humanities and Social Sciences<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sho Watanabe
\nFourth-year, School of International Liberal Studies<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI feel uncomfortable going through physical examinations when we are divided based on biological gender.\u201d \u201cProfessors and classmates hurt me with their discriminatory remarks.\u201d A student group, \u201cDiversity Waseda,\u201d heard such anguished voices of LGBT students and proposed that Waseda University build an LGBT student center to help them enjoy campus life without facing adversity and discrimination. In March, this student group won the President\u2019s Award in the third \u201cWaseda Vision 150 Student Competition,\u201d which is the best of the best awards in the final round.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was thrilled when our team managed to get an overwhelming number of votes from visitors among the final eight, which impressed upon us that we were able to convey our message,\u201d says Itsumura. \u201cWe took action in an empathetic response to many of Waseda University\u2019s faculty members who raised questions on the issues of gender and sexuality. The university also heard our opinions in an appropriate manner. We felt lucky to be in an environment where the university and students can mutually engage one another,\u201d says Watanabe.\"\"<\/p>\n

Both of them regard the award as a starting point rather than the end goal. \u201cWe will mobilize interested students to make our proposal a reality.\u201d (Watanabe) \u201cWe want LGBT students to know that \u2018many members of Waseda University are willing to come together to think about issues.\u2019\u201d (Itsumura) They are already moving forward toward a new goal.
\n*LGBT is acronym that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In Japan, the term is interchangeably used with homosexual females and males, and bisexual individuals in reference to anyone who pursues a life not necessarily in conformity with their legally or socially assigned gender at the time of birth. They are also known as a \u201csexual minority.\u201d<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________________________________________________________
\nMs. Itsumura from Aichi Prefecture is majoring in the history of Western art after having graduated from Aichi Shukutoku High School. Mr. Watanabe from Tokyo is a graduate of Meiho High School. They represent \u201cLGBT Youth Japan,\u201d a volunteer group. A team of four members, which included two alumni who graduated in 2014, participated in the third \u201cWaseda Vision 150 Student Competition.\u201d Having interviewed LGBT students and relevant people from other universities, their presentation based on thorough data collection and analysis won the President\u2019s Award.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Diversity Waseda Satoko Itsumura Fifth-year, School of Humanities and Social Sciences Sho Watanabe Fourth-year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3614,"featured_media":16265,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[206],"tags":[214,245],"class_list":["post-16263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-attention-en","tag-people-en","tag-news-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3614"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16263"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20402,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16263\/revisions\/20402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}