{"id":110146,"date":"2016-03-09T09:35:14","date_gmt":"2016-03-09T14:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=110146"},"modified":"2023-06-27T12:07:34","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T16:07:34","slug":"student-perspective-calliope-wong-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2016\/03\/student-perspective-calliope-wong-16\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Perspective: Calliope Wong ’16"},"content":{"rendered":"

To read more stories from the latest edition of UConn Magazine, go to the Magazine website<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

If the name Calliope Wong is familiar to you, it\u2019s most likely because, since not being accepted to Smith College in 2013, Wong \u201916 (CLAS) has been making headlines fighting for the rights of gender-transitioning women to gain acceptance to women\u2019s colleges. A number of colleges have changed their policies in the past few years, including this past fall, Smith. When that happened, The New York Times<\/em> ran an editorial asking Smith to make Wong an honorary member of their Class of 2017 saying, \u201cSmith didn\u2019t give Ms. Wong an education. But the student\u2019s courage and tenacity taught her dream school a great deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

While that bravery and activism is what she\u2019s most known for, since enrolling at UConn in 2013, Wong\u2019s been tackling a number of arenas. She\u2019s an English major pre-med student in the Honors program who won a coveted IDEA grant<\/a> to record an album of piano music. We asked Wong about each of these facets of Calliope.<\/p>\n

\"Calliope<\/a>So, has Smith made you an honorary member of the 2017 class<\/strong>?<\/strong>
\nNo, they\u2019ve not responded in any way.<\/p>\n

How did it make you feel to have The New York Times<\/em> advocate for that in a piece by its Editorial Board?<\/strong>
\nIt was affirming and definitely a nice feeling. Having The New York Times<\/em> write about you is good for your cause.<\/p>\n

We know why not Smith, but why UConn? <\/strong>
\nThere are a lot of resources at UConn that I couldn\u2019t find at other schools. Other schools wouldn\u2019t allow me to be a pre-med English major, putting the hard sciences and humanities together. I get to do that here. In the morning I might be synthesizing aspirin in my Organic Chem lab and in the afternoon I\u2019ll be dissecting lines from Beowulf<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Why pre-med? <\/strong>
\nI\u2019d like to be an endocrinologist, a doctor who works with people with hormonal disorders. This includes transgender people, so I\u2019d be able to help my own community as well. That\u2019s one of the main reasons I\u2019ve decided on this path: I want to be useful to the trans kids who\u2019ll come in the generations after me, as a way of giving back to the community that raised me. I\u2019m training to be a doctor to fill a need, to figure out, \u2018How do we help people survive?\u2019 I want to be a culturally competent doctor who can do just that.<\/p>\n

And why English? <\/strong>
\nI had a high school English teacher who encouraged me to write. I was good at hiding behind words, and she saw through the vocabulary and competent writing and challenged me to write honestly. After that, my writing helped me explain who I am to myself.<\/p>\n

Calliope is the Muse of Poetry. I picked my own name from the main character in Jeffrey Eugenides\u2019 Middlesex<\/em>. Gender identity and life in general weren\u2019t simple for that character, and the story made a big impact on me in high school. The short version is, I picked English because I want to become someone useful, but I also want to become someone genuine.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve gotten a lot of media attention for someone your age, what has been the most daunting media experience? <\/strong>
\nWhile I was still in high school, MSNBC rolled up into my driveway after school one day.<\/p>\n

Unannounced? <\/strong>
\nYes! And I had a bio test the next day.<\/p>\n

Has the Caitlyn Jenner media jamboree affected your day-to-day life? <\/strong>
\nIf you mean her presence in reality TV, it really hasn\u2019t. She doesn\u2019t define the typical trans narrative, and she honestly doesn\u2019t have much in common with me. I\u2019m very glad she\u2019s given a voice to the community, but I hope that she realizes there have been a lot of voices in this community belonging to people who have been around the block for a lot longer. It\u2019s sort of a risky thing to put a young person in a spotlight \u2013 and that\u2019s sort of what she is, in trans years. Awareness of trans people itself doesn\u2019t change things.<\/p>\n

What do you mean? <\/strong>
\nThere are so many socioeconomic issues that trans people face. Lack of medical access and insurance coverage, lack of employment protections, and so many other issues. Okay, sure, we have marriage equality, but look at the rate of trans youth expelled from homes and in poverty. Forget the ‘trans’ label for a minute \u2013 do you want this for your child\u00adren? We really must make our politics about human beings and their survival.<\/p>\n

\n

I am many other things besides trans. — Calliope Wong<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You work so hard and do so much. Do you ever stop and tell yourself, \u2018Good job, Calliope?\u2019 <\/strong>
\nThings have changed. This is good, this is what we\u2019ve been working for. Of course I sleep in sometimes like everyone else. But I do try to remind myself, \u2018Now let\u2019s keep moving.\u2019<\/p>\n

Speaking of pats on the back,\u00a0congratulations on being one of the 26 recipients of the UConn 2014 IDEA grants. Tell us about your project. <\/strong>
\nI studied classical piano until my freshman year of high school. Then from freshman to sophomore year, life got complicated; I came out to my parents for one. I stopped piano lessons. It turned out that not having piano was a quiet and lonely feeling, so I listened to a lot of instrumental music and started making soundtracks and stuff. I learned to improvise and compose. It\u2019s like learning to speak, you learn different ways to say things. I applied for the grant so I could create something. It\u2019s an instrumental album with five tracks of improvisational piano recorded acoustically and five digital re-interpretations. Together, and with a booklet of liner notes, they tell my story of growing up as a Chinese-American trans woman.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s one thing you want non trans people to know and appreciate about trans people? <\/strong>
\nI am many other things besides trans. I\u2019m only 20; I have a lot of room to grow. As people grow they become more things. It\u2019s our job as people to integrate these parts and to give other people the potential to integrate, too. We have a lot to learn from one another.<\/p>\n

What are you fighting for right now? <\/strong>
\nEducation is one. I am part of TSER (Trans Student Educational Resources), which was started by trans activist Eli Erlick of California. There are a lot of issues in educational inequality \u2013 students being discriminated against or not feeling safe. That\u2019s not okay. People need the opportunity to be educated, yet there are a lot of students who can\u2019t feel comfortable just going to the bathroom. But I\u2019m only one person. I\u2019m a junior in college. At the end of a day, I\u2019ve only had 24 hours like everyone else.<\/p>\n

A note to leave us on? <\/strong>
\nYou\u2019re going to get a lot more than one story from a person if you stick around. We all are more capable of connecting than we imagine.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A woman of many talents, Wong discusses recording an album, crusading for transgender equality, and deciding to graduate a full year early \u2013 with honors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":110150,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[156,2225,2306,2234],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[117],"class_list":["post-110146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-profile","category-uconn-storrs","category-uconn-voices","category-university-life"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-13 12:18:08","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110146"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110167,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110146\/revisions\/110167"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/110150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110146"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=110146"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=110146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

To listen to the album Wong recorded courtesy of an IDEA grant, go to s.uconn.edu\/calliope<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n