Representative Sarah McBride (D-DE), SPA/BA ’13, said she wouldn’t be the person she is today without her time at American University.

“This school, this family genuinely means so much to me,” she told a packed crowd at AU’s Washington College of Law, September 3. “I would not be out as trans or a member of Congress if not for AU, [so] this institution will always have such a special place in my heart.” 

McBride’s hourlong conversation with President Jon Alger launched this year’s iteration of the Perspectives on the Civic Life series. Alger kicked off the conversation by announcing a new university-wide initiative to mark the country’s semi-quincentennial: 250+ at American. 

“The ‘plus’ is important—it reflects my optimism that there will be more after the first 250 years of democracy,” Alger said. “We’re going to be reflecting on where we’ve been, where we are now, and where we can go in the future through a variety of disciplinary lenses across the university.”McBride’s remarks, too, began with where she’s been. 

After serving the first state’s first senate district for four years, the Wilmington native became the first openly transgender person elected to Congress in 2024. Her historic journey to the Hill began when McBride was a young child and took a fateful turn in 2012 when—on the last day of her term as AU Student Government (AUSG) president—she came out in The Eagle.

“My interest in politics was really rooted in a crisis of hope that I was facing as a young person,” she said. “At five, six, seven years old, I started to realize that there was something about me that society didn’t accept and that this world was not built for someone like me to live openly and authentically.”

The young McBride, then an aspiring architect, “went searching for examples of our world becoming kinder and more just and more inclusive.” She found them in books about the US Capitol and the White House.

“I started to marvel not just at the beauty of those buildings, but at the history that occurred within their walls,” she said. “The through line of every chapter was the story of advocates, activists, and a handful of courageous and effective elected officials working together to right the wrongs of our past, to address injustice, to bring people from the shadows and the margins of society into the circle of opportunity.

“I found hope in that story. I found hope in the possibilities in our politics.”

For years, McBride saw politics “as a means to bury myself.” She thought she needed to remain closeted to work in politics and tried to convince herself that making a difference on behalf of others would “somehow fill the void and pain” in her own life. 
It wasn’t until she visited AU as a prospective student that she started to imagine a different life—one in which she could work to change the world while also living authentically and joyfully in it. 

“I wanted to be in DC, but I wanted a community,” she said of AU. “I felt at home here pretty quickly. I think I also decided to come here because, subconsciously, I knew that when I came out, this would be a place that would hopefully accept me and embrace me.”

Student government—which the political science major said was even more formative than her classes and internships—gave her courage and “the thick skin necessary to care less about what people would say when I came out.”

When she did, in a May 2012 Eagle op-ed titled “The Real Me,” McBride said the response from the campus community was overwhelmingly supportive.

“It was profound for me because it was the first glimpse of what I would see throughout my life, which is that, as understandable as my fears were, they were much worse than the reality [of coming out].”

Moreover, McBride discovered that she didn’t have to “mourn the loss of a future.”

“Maybe I could have a future that I hoped to have where I could find love and do work that I love and live in a community that I love,” she said. “And it was that first burst of hope that propelled me into advocacy.” 

The event was cosponsored by AUSG, the Graduate Leadership Council, Kennedy Political Union, the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, the Sine Institute for Policy and Politics, and the Center for Student Involvement. Afterward, McBride took photos for 45 minutes with her fellow Eagles—including AUSG president Jeffrie Chambers IV, Kogod/BS ’27, who introduced his predecessor at the start of the program—before heading back to the Hill for a 9 p.m. vote.

McBride, said Chambers, is proof that “being part of AUSG can really lead you on to do big and amazing things.”