In the decade since the LGBTQ Center opened in 2004, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer communities have experienced several dramatic changes, both within and beyond the University.
Rhode Island became the 10th state to legalize same-sex marriage last year, while at the University level, Brown started providing health care coverage for transitioning transgender students, staff members and faculty members.
The center is commemorating these changes with a month-long 10th anniversary celebration, with events including a keynote speech by the writer and performer Scott Turner Schofield, film screenings, discussions, a dance and an exhibit displaying the history of LGBTQ life at Brown.
“The center has grown quite a bit in the last 10 years, just in terms of the programs we offer, the support we provide and the students who rely on the space,” said Kelly Garrett, the center’s program director. “We wanted to acknowledge this 10th birthday, and we thought the 250th anniversary was a good time to place us into the history of Brown.”
The celebration kicked off April 2 with an open house at the center featuring a birthday cake.
Micaela Burgess ’17 said the opening reception has been one of her favorite moments of the celebration so far.
“I saw a lot of faces that I hadn’t seen before, both students and administrators,” Burgess said. “It was really nice to see the three rooms that I spend almost all my time in packed with so many people.”
A central part of the celebration entails honoring how far LGBTQ members of the Brown community have come in the past several decades. On the third floor of the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, an array of photographs and artifacts showcases the historical presence of queer life at Brown since the first documented public appearance of an LGBTQ organization in the early 1970s.
Walter Kikuchi ’16, the LGBTQ Center’s archivist, said he enjoyed his experience culling and organizing the exhibition.
“It was very personally rewarding, as a queer person, to really fully immerse myself in the history of queer Brown students,” he said. “We laid out (the exhibit) so many times on the floor to see where everything was going to go in the timeline, and to actually, physically see this representation of over 30 years of our history was so fulfilling.”
While the center has grown, much of its original role on campus — to educate and support students, as well as provide advocacy on policy issues — still remains intact, Garrett said.
“We’re busting at the seams,” Garrett said, noting that the center has expanded from two to four rooms, and from two undergraduate workers to three undergrads and one graduate student.
Despite these gains, the center continues to grapple with educating the community about homophobia and other issues LGBTQ students may face.
“There are a lot of people who are open-minded but don’t know a lot about LGBTQ issues,” Garrett said. “Many of them don’t know much about LGBTQ oppression, or they may not know how to support someone who’s coming out.”
“There’s still a lot of homophobia out there, even at Brown,” she added. “I still meet with a lot of students who are struggling to come out, whose home communities are more conservative, whose families are more conservative — they are still experiencing homophobia.”
The center will aim to tackle these issues by providing more training, education and support in future years, Garrett said. She added that the center will continue advocating for more University policies inclusive of transgender students, such as designating bathrooms as gender-neutral.
The center is working with less money than its founders envisioned when they proposed the center’s creation in 2004.
“The University resources are definitely fewer than what our community had in mind 15 or 20 years ago,” Kikuchi said.
Some students expressed surprise that the center is only turning 10 years old.
“Before I started working as an archivist, when I found out it was only going to be the 10th anniversary in 2014, I was shocked,” Kikuchi said.
“I thought Brown being Brown, the center would be a lot older than it actually is,” said Lorin Smith ’15. “But then I remembered that Brown is in the United States, a patriarchic society, and also a homophobic one.”
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