By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) Oct 27 | The Media has been engaged in a "feeding frenzy" since literally seconds after the announcement during halftime of The College of William & Mary's homecoming game against James Madison on Saturday. From Broadcast to Web, and Print as well, the coverage has been extensive with analysis being offered by the pundits and talk show circuits and the news has traveled across both oceans.
From correspondent Tyra M. Vaughn at The Newport News Daily Press comes this report:
The crowning of the university's homecoming queen usually happens without much publicity, but by Monday it had attracted the attention of the Fox News television show O'Reilly Factor and newspapers as far away as Australia — who all wanted to hear about the 20-year-old college student's quest for the title. The attention isn't surprising to Vasold, who was elected the university's first transgender homecoming queen.
Vasold — who considers himself "gender-queer" because he identifies with something other than the traditional male or female gender roles — is only the second transgender homecoming queen in the country. The first was crowned last year at George Mason University, Vasold said.
Vasold — who also prefers the term "ze" instead of he or she and "zir" instead of him or her — said the media attention isn't surprising.
He prepared himself to be in the national spotlight when his friend asked to nominate him for the position earlier this fall. However, Vasold still is hesitant about doing some media interviews, especially on-camera ones.
"I'm still trying to get my head around this," Vasold said. "My friend nominated me to see if I would get on the ballot, and I got elected. It's truly an honor to be recognized by my peers, but I'm still trying to figure out how to handle this attention."Figuring out how to balance school work and extracurricular commitments alongside interviews has been the most difficult part of being crowned, Vasold said.
"The William and Mary community has been really supportive of me," Vasold said. "I've had students and alumni come up to me and tell me how surprised and happy they are for me to be homecoming queen."Vasold said people have also e-mailed him and reached out to him on the social-networking site Facebook to lend their support. Vasold's family was in town for the crowning, but were reluctant about him taking the role out of concern for his safety.
Vasold said he isn't too concerned about something happening to him because the only negativity he's received has been through online forums on news Web sites.
"Numerically the positive comments have outweighed the negative ones," Vasold said.In William and Mary's Sadler Center on Monday, students continued to stop and congratulate Vasold on his win. A member of the university's dining staff stopped Vasold to say she kept the article about his crowning. "I'm so proud of you," she said while giving him a hug.
Vasold said he thinks his crowning helps bring more awareness to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues.
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