Logan • In the days leading up to the first day of spring semester, Marcie Robertson received countless anonymous emails attacking her.
The 20-year-old transgender Utah State University student, working as a resident assistant at one of the Logan school’s on-campus housing complexes, had no idea whom they were coming from or why. That is, until she discovered a viral post on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, alleging she had invaded a “safe haven for female students.”
“It was an incessant barrage of unthinkable hate coming at me from these online spaces,” Robertson said. “I never could have imagined that there would be such scale to it.”
The post came from Eric Moutsos, a former Salt Lake City police officer who had refused to ride his motorcycle in a pride parade. In it, he referred to the mother of a USU student, who said her daughter had returned from the holiday break to a new suite mate and resident assistant for her hall, taking issue with the fact that Robertson was transgender.
Since that post, Robertson said, she has been doing “damage control.” The pre-law student fell behind on her studies from the emotional toll and now has been working to catch up.
The stress has left her feeling “boxed” into her room, said Robertson, lamenting that building community — one of the reasons she chose on-campus housing — seems out of reach.
“In trying to essentially protect these female spaces from an imagined threat,” Robertson said, “they’ve put a woman, myself, at risk. Making me the target of hate speech like this is just counterproductive to furthering women’s safety.”
Cheryl Saltzman, the Farr West mother who took issue with Robertson living in her daughter’s dorm and serving as an R.A., said she felt blindsided by the school for not alerting her about her daughter’s new suite mate.
A USU alum, Saltzman said she chose Merrill Hall because she remembered it being a “safer, more conservative” environment.
The university found a new room for her daughter the day after she voiced her concerns. And now the school is planning a review of its housing program.
“It’s OK to be kind, and it’s OK to be inclusive,” Saltzman said, “but there’s a line for sports, there’s a line for bathrooms and dorms and apartments and consent. We cannot allow it to be crossed.”
After sharing her thoughts on Facebook, Saltzman said, she received support from online commenters and a phone call from Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz.
“We will not tolerate this any longer,” the Hooper Republican vowed on X. “In the [legislative] session … we will make it clear: Female spaces are for biological females only. No woman should ever feel compelled to relocate to feel safe and comfortable on our college campuses.”
Gov. Spencer Cox weighed in during his monthly news conference, saying there may need to be “tweaks” to HB257, which bars transgender individuals from accessing gender-specific spaces.
“We need safe spaces for women,” Cox said, “and that’s really important, and so that’s why we passed the bathroom and locker room bill, and I think this would apply in a similar situation.”
Despite the insults directed at her, Robertson said she has also received much support from her friends, family and even strangers online. Several Merrill Hall residents have written a letter to the university expressing their backing.
Elise Carter, who has been gathering the opinions of women in the building, said 20 students have signed the letter.
“As a female resident of Merrill,” Carter said, “it annoyed me that people who I had never met, who’ve never lived here, who most of them are not female or residents of Merrill Hall, are sort of furthering their own agendas through this issue and speaking on our behalf.”
Another dorm resident, Audrey Allen, echoed that sentiment.
“I don’t have a problem with it,” Allen said. “She’s a girl and so she deserves to stay where she is as a girl.”
Soon the mother’s concerns went viral, USU President Elizabeth Cantwell sent an email to all students in on-campus housing, stating the school will begin an external review of its housing program in the coming weeks. This review will include policies, procedures and practices to identify potential improvements to “better serve students living on campus.”
USU spokesperson Amanda DeRito noted that campus police have increased their presence at the dorm and will monitor online threats.
Transgender students, meanwhile, say they feel increasingly unsafe on campus.
“It’s getting harder and harder to exist on campus as a trans person,” said student Morgan Boase, who recently moved off campus out of safety concerns. “They want to push us into housing that’s very far from everything else on campus. They don’t want us using the locker rooms, so we can’t use a lot of gym facilities on campus. And now that we don’t have our Inclusion Center, we can’t even hang out in the student center. We’re slowly being pushed off campus.”
