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Tucked away on the first floor of the Schine Student Center, the Intercultural Collective is its own safe space, distant from the bustling dining areas of the student center. The collective has a host of conference rooms and offices, a low-stimulation room and a lounge available for student use, and it is here that the LGBTQ Resource Center calls home.

“It’s a safe place to chill out,” Ceinwen Gibbons said. “My favorite part is when we have events and everybody comes together.”

Gibbons, a junior at Syracuse University, has been using the resource center since spring of 2021. The events the center holds are important for building a sense of community on campus among LGBTQ students, they said, noting that the center’s recent Halloween events were particularly exciting.

The LGBTQ Resource Center celebrated its 20th anniversary in October. In addition to events, it offers a variety of programming to students including affinity groups, educational sessions and low-pressure social groups. The center also functions as an office of advocacy, with senior staff members serving as representatives for LGBTQ students. It aims to be an inclusive and accessible community for all students, according to its website.

“Obviously, it starts off as an LGBTQ initiative, but any and everyone is welcome,” said Jorge Castillo, the director of the center. “And any and everyone drops in now and joins us.”

Before the LGBTQ Resource Center existed on campus, the push for a designated space for LGBTQ people on campus was in the works since the late 1990s.

In 1997, then-SU student Jordan Potash proposed the Rainbow Task Force as a way to advocate for the needs of LGBTQ students. The following fall, the University Senate Ad Hoc Committee on LGBT Issues was created to survey LGBTQ issues on SU’s campus and decide the best way to address the needs of LGBTQ students. By 2001, the committee determined the need for an LGBT Resource Center with a full-time staff.

The resource center has changed locations, grown in size and offered more expansive services to students since 2001. Max Yogeshwar, a senior at SU and the president of Qolor Collective — SU’s student-run club for LGBTQ and transgender students of color — said he is grateful for the sense of pride and community the center cultivates.

“It lets people know they’re not alone and that they have that community. The (resource center) can be a place that (students) can figure themselves out or find community if they are out,” Yogeshwar said. “Having that outspoken presence in the Syracuse community is so important.”

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More Coverage about the LGBTQ Center

• Jorge Castillo works to foster success within the LGBTQ community at SU
  
• LGBT Resource Center expands gender-affirming clothing closet
  
• SU’s LGBT Resource Center plans for new role as it moves out of current home
  

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As part of its celebration of 20 years, the resource center put together a comprehensive list of programming for students throughout the month of October, including keynote speakers and Drag Queen Bingo. The events honoring the center’s anniversary were inclusive and open to all students at SU and demonstrated the offerings available at the center year-round.

The anniversary also gave insight into future projects the center is looking to take on. Castillo credited the anniversary with sparking an interest among the center to create an oral history archive project.

“We want to hear people’s stories of what it was like to be queer, to be trans at SU whenever they were here,” Castillo said. “At the heart of most of what we do is trying to find ways for students to feel that they belong here and find their community.”

Community is the common thread among the staff members and students at the center. In celebrating 20 years, the center is recognizing the legacy of students and staff in the LGBTQ community at SU who have made an impact.

Castillo said he doesn’t want LGBTQ students to feel like the center is their only safe space on campus — ideally, the whole university should be inclusive to them. By working toward accessible and inclusive housing and health care at SU, the resource center hopes to achieve that goal.

“Part of that would mean that gender-inclusive housing is across the board available … that health care and the health care providers are all competent and trained on how to sensitively welcome queer and trans students.”

As inclusivity for LGBTQ students increases on campus, the center is emphasizing its role in being a space for students and allies to connect as well as to educate. Gibbons hopes that allies will continue to use the space as a way to learn more about pronoun usage. Yogeshwar said that he hopes the center can continue its outspoken support for LGBTQ students on campus in the coming years.

“While the queer community might not be as large as the entire Syracuse community, there’s still a vibrant, thriving community here, and people want to see that. People care about coexistence,” Yogeshwar said. “It lets students know that there are allies all around them, and they can reach out and have that community.”

Published on November 11, 2021 at 12:28 am