Incoming Junipero Resident Fellow (RF) Tania Mitchell’s parents just have one quibble about her partner of eight years.

“They don’t talk about our relationship being interracial, they don’t talk about Aaron being trans, but they do talk about Aaron’s septum piercing,” Mitchell said. “They say, ‘Have you talked to him about that? Is he taking it out yet?”

Mitchell and T. Aaron Hans will be the new RFs in Junipero next fall. Mitchell has worked as the Service Learning Director for Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) for the past academic year.

Hans, Mitchell’s partner, works as the Advocacy Program Manager at the Gay-Straight Alliance Network in San Francisco and will be Stanford’s first openly transgender Resident Fellow.

“It’s just easier,” Hans said, explaining why he’s chosen to be upfront about his identity. “I don’t have to think about changing pronouns when I talk about playing lacrosse in college.”

“If you get to know me more than ‘How’s the weather?’ you usually get told,” he said. “If you Google search me, you’re going to figure it out.”

Hans cited the increasing numbers of openly LGBT students on college campuses as another motivation for his openness.

“I believe that it is my responsibility to be out in a positive way for young people,” he said. “[As a college student,] it was important for me to see others who looked like me, who struggled with similar identity struggles and who allowed me to see that I could grow up and be a productive member of society.”

“[Being out] is also about honoring and acknowledging who I am as a whole person,” Hans continued. “I identify as transgender or genderqueer, but I don’t necessarily identify as a man, just like I didn’t necessarily identify as a woman.”

Hans said he came out to Junipero’s Resident Assistant (RA) applicants during the dorm’s second-round interviews.

“There wasn’t a whole lot of reaction, which was refreshing,” Hans said.

Mitchell explained that she and Hans asked RA applicants to bring in a few objects that said something about their personal identity. Hans and Mitchell talked about their matching wristwatches, a symbol of their commitment to each other.

“We’re not married,” Mitchell said. “When people hear that, they wonder why, and that’s a good segue into Aaron’s identity.”

Mitchell said she and Hans could either accept the assumption that they are a heterosexual couple or repetitively inform people about Hans’ gender identity.

“You either never come out, or you come out all the time,” she said.

Being in a relationship with Hans has redefined Mitchell’s own identity.

“Our relationship is queer, but I was straight before I met Aaron,” she said. “People ask ‘How do you identify now?’ and I say ‘I don’t’ . . . It’s not simple for either of us. We’ve both learned a lot.”

Hans says Californians in general have been nonchalant about his gender identity.

“Most people just go ‘Oh, okay,’” he said. Before coming to Stanford, Hans taught freshman seminar classes for six years at California State University-Monterey Bay.

“I expected my students to be freaked out and to run away from my courses,” he said. “I told them on the second day of class. They had five days to change their schedule, but there was no mass exodus.”

“I always say, if you have questions, talk to me . . . If people have questions or concerns, I’d rather they talk to me openly instead of behind my back,” Hans added.

Mitchell also has extensive experience with college students. Mitchell lived in a residence dorm at Indiana University at Bloomington, where she was in charge of community building in a dorm for 750 freshmen from 1997 to 1999. As the CCSRE service learning director at Stanford, Mitchell helps students develop internships and find public services opportunities that build on their academic interests, and she said she hopes the RF position will help her connect with undergraduates.

The pair discussed their hope that they would not be defined by Hans’ gender identity.

“We have no intention of being known as the trans RF couple,” Mitchell said. “But we’ll accept that label.”

“We hope students will judge us based on the work that we do and how we engage with people,” Hans added. “When people realize how comfortable I am in my skin, then it’s not an issue.”