On the first day of classes this fall at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, W. Meredith Bacon taught her political science class as a woman for the first time after undergoing a sex change during the summer, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported last week. During the previous semester, most students knew the professor as Mr. Wally Bacon. Throughout his 29 years in the political science department at Nebraska, Bacon had become one of the most well-known professors on the campus, attracting undergraduates to his many international relations courses and classes on the politics of east-central Eurasia.

The university's administration has been supportive of Bacon's transformation from a man to a woman. Many felt that the university was so supportive of Bacon due to his popularity and because he announced his decision while he was serving as president of the university's faculty, according to The Chronicle.

Several employees on other campuses, many of them untenured, who have undergone gender transitions, have experienced much less acceptance than Bacon and have consequently lost their jobs. For example, at one Indiana school, an art professor felt the need to leave after the college president reacted negatively. She was supportive of the professor's personal need, but informed him that he would lose his job if he went through with the change.

The objection was largely financial. "You have the potential of costing us hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars [from donors who might disapprove]," warned one college official. These negative experiences of many university faculty and staff members were probably due to their position in academia, as businesses tend to be more diligent about protecting employees from gender-identity discrimination than colleges and universities.

Despite this disheartening fact, Lynn Conway, the recipient of a sex change about 40 years ago and a professor of engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, explained that transsexualism in academia is not as rare as often assumed. "Every really large university has at least a handful of students in transition at any point in time and perhaps a dozen or more transitioned women and men on their faculty and staff," she told The Chronicle.

Jody Neathery-Castro, an associate professor of political science at Nebraska, was surprised at students' reactions to Bacon's transformation. "The silence has been deafening," she commented in The Chronicle. "After all, this is Nebraska ... We expected a big negative fallout ... but that hasn't happened."

Despite the one or two students who chose to drop Bacon's courses because they were offended, the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. Many students seemed to agree that Professor Bacon's gender did not matter to them. Katie Surface, a senior who took five courses with Bacon before her transformation and is currently taking one after, wasn't bothered. "Dr. Bacon is probably the best professor on this campus," she told The Chronicle. "It's just his intelligence-sorry, her intelligence. She's still Dr. Bacon," she said.