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by GoPride.com News Staff

Austin, Texas — The University of Texas at Austin will soon start putting transgender students' preferred names on all official school documents, including medical records.

It's an expansion of a policy that started last fall. School administrators are working with an LGBT task force to better integrate students' realities into the classroom.

At this point, while classroom rosters do list students' preferred names, they also include their birth middle names, which can lead to awkward situations in class.

Sophomore Joey Ovalle told the Daily Texan that a professor once used his feminine, legal middle name in class.

"It's not necessarily being outed by it that bothered me," Ovalle said. "It's the questions and the explanations that people feel entitled to after that which can be difficult to deal with."

Preferred names cannot go on a diploma or transcript, so students will have to get their names legally changed before they graduate.

University IDs, which are sometimes checked by police during traffic stops and compared with drivers' licenses, will have students' preferred names on the front and legal names on the back.

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