LGBTQ students are looking for a safe space to come together, especially after Wednesdays brush with Christian radicals.
And the university has such a place. On the top floor of the Dorothy Brown house is the Queer Center, the campus’s only designated safe space for LGBTQ youth.
This year, the center is run by a live-in student, sophomore Suzanne Sim. The student who lives in is paid by the university to manage the upkeep of the space and help plan and organize LGBTQ events. Applicants for the position apply at the end of the spring semester and go through an interview process with the directors of multicultural life.
“It’s basically a safe space,” Sims said, but it doesn’t get much attention from students. “It’s not very busy,” she said. The center is open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. weekdays, but Sims feels that not enough people know about it to come and spend time there.
“Even within the queer community, a lot of people haven’t even heard of this place or know it exists,” Sims said.
Some students don’t feel that the Queer Center is enough, and have the idea to take a step further, to start a LGBTQ house on campus.
‘The biggest thing that could happen is having an actual LGBTQ space,” said sophomore Saige Huiet.
Huiet and sophomore Jackson Bailey hope to create a larger safe space for LGBTQ students on campus, in the form of a house.
“There would be a place where we could hold things and actually build a good community without having to make a huge public deal about it,” she said.
Huiet says that she feels that the LGBTQ community on campus is fractured and that she sees a house as a way to bring everyone together.
“With music students specifically, we tend to be in our own community a lot of the time,” she said. “So its difficult to know what else is out there an who else is there so its even harder to become involved in things outside of it.”
They hope to have a house by fall semester next year as they are waiting for the rest of the pieces to fall into place. Huiet hopes for it to be more than a place where LGBTQ students can live, but also a place for events and dialogue to take place.
“The house would be perfect for people who are questioning,” she said.
She hopes that it will create an inclusive community where LGBTQ students, allies and those who are questioning to feel at home and to discuses what they have been through.
“I would like for there to be some form of a cooperative effort,” said Sims.
“The administration is fully supportive,” said Vivie Nguyen, director of Cultural Recourse Centers and Coordinator of LGBT Services.
Nguyen wants to help LGBTQ students in any way she can, and has been meeting Huiet and Bailey, along with overseeing the Queer Center.
“I am here and I’m happy to help,” she said.
Nguyen, Huiet and Sims all want to work toward brining LGBTQ students and allies together through community discussion and they are all open to outreach of those who are interested in getting more involved.
“We want all the communities supporting this and being able to use and have a space,” said Huiet