ABSTRACT
While there has been an ongoing push within postsecondary education for “data-driven decision-making,” there has been some provocative questioning of just what it means to collect data and develop policies to accommodate trans* populations. The relative lack of interrogation about such policy-making signals the ways in which institutional sexism reinforces and bolsters the ongoing effects of transgender oppression. This chapter discusses how calls for collecting certain types of data that already exist (e.g., climate data) or are rift with problematic assumptions and often become overly simplified (e.g., demographic data) continue to serve as impediments to forward policy-based progress. Rather, this chapter discusses what data is needed in order to chart a course for trans*formative change in postsecondary education, highlighting several ongoing initiatives to collect data with and alongside transgender students, faculty, and staff to further gender justice. The chapter closes with a vision of what trans*formational policies could look like across educational contexts and spaces.
