DeKALB | Bethany Hill certainly didn’t identify with the transgender people on Jerry Springer. She wondered if there was even a word for what she was feeling.

“I had always felt that there was something a little off but I couldn’t really describe it,” she said. “And since society in the 90s didn’t really have words [for it] the only thing you ever saw about trans people were on Jerry Springer…and so it never really occurred to me [that I was transgender]…And I just went, ‘okay, I’ll just live my life as a nice boy and pretend that this is how everything is supposed to be.’”

Transgender means someone whose biological gender doesn’t match with how they perceive themselves, said Molly Holmes, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) Resource Center.

Hill, a male-to-female trans student, said she had always felt something was different about her, but she didn’t start exploring it until she found resources within the LGBT community.

“I decided that’s what I wanted for my life and began on that [path] and have never really looked back since,” she said.

When Hill, already in gender transition, inquired at NIU Health Services in 2008 about transgender resources, she said she was told to look elsewhere.

Now, transgender students who use the NIU-provided health insurance will have more options available to them.

Coverage of certain transgender costs was added to the NIU student health insurance and will become effective for the fall 2011 semester, said Carole Balli, benefits services supervisor for Student Insurance.

Balli said transgender coverage was added this year because it was the first year it has been asked for.

The Presidential Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity researched health care options and presented them to Health Services, Holmes said.

The addition of transgender coverage comes at no cost to students, Balli said. The health insurance fee will increase from $395 to $415 per semester next year, but the increase is due to the addition of testing for sexually transmitted diseases at Health Services and the rising cost of health care.

Transgendered people make a gender transition through different methods, Holmes said, like through dress, name changes, taking hormones or surgery.

A gender transition can costs anywhere between $5,000 and $20,000, depending what changes a trans person wants to make, Holmes said.

Balli said the additions to the health insurance plan will cover costs for doctor visits, lab tests and “other covered procedures per policy limits.”

Surgery and prescriptions will not be covered for transgendered students, but these services are not covered for any students under the health insurance plan, Balli said.

Gender reassignment surgery can cost anywhere between $15,000 to $25,000 for male to female and between $30,000 to $50,000 for female to male, Hill said.

Holmes said she sees the changes as a step in the right direction in providing an inclusive place for trans students on campus.

“It’s about being a university that aims to be equitable and inclusive for everybody who goes here and anything we can do to help even one part of the population really does make our campus even stronger,” she said.

Holmes said not many private insurance companies include transgender costs under their plans because the concept of transgender can often be misunderstood.

“Unfortunately, in general, surgery or hormones or even therapy related to gender transition is seen as an elective type of thing,” Holmes said. “For individuals who feel this difference or separation between biological gender and their sense of themselves, it really isn’t an elective thing. If something is wrong or it doesn’t match up, then individuals really should be able to take steps to align that just like anybody would for any other piece of identity. You should be able to be who you are.”

Hill said she sees the additions to the health insurance plan as progress but fears they will not mean much for the NIU transgender community. She is concerned that transgender students don’t have enough mental health resources close to campus.

Transgender people are required to go through a year of counseling to go through gender transition, said Holmes.

Counseling costs are already covered 80 percent by NIU health insurance, Balli said.

However, Balli said she knows of no mental health professionals on campus who specialize in transgender issues.

Hill said the nearest specialists that she knows of are Compassionate Counseling in Bolingbrook and Spectrum of Rockford LGBTQ in Loves Park. Compassionate Counseling is about 47 miles from campus and Spectrum of Rockford LGBTQ is 43 miles.

“That’s not going to be very helpful to any student that lives in the dorms or doesn’t have their own transportation,” Hill said.

Hill said she would like to see a mental health resource on campus for transgender students.

Though she is no longer in transgender therapy, Hill commutes over an hour for other resources.

She commutes to Howard Brown Health Center in Chicago for the necessary blood work she needs every three months to check her cholesterol and liver function on the hormones, and to receive hormone prescriptions, which she fills at local DeKalb pharmacies.

Hill said she pay $26 per month for her pill prescriptions, which reduce her testosterone levels and increase her estrogen levels. Injection, patch or cream hormone prescriptions, which have less effects on the liver, can costs more, she said.

Balli said Health Services will not offer the blood tests for students taking hormones nor carry hormone prescriptions because the pharmacy only carries prescriptions that a lot of students need.

Holmes said it is impossible to tell how large the trans population is on campus. Some trans people complete their gender transition and live their life as their non-biological gender. Others may be more open about their transition.