College students from around New England gathered at Tufts last Saturday to discuss issues facing the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) communities at their schools and in the framework of US society. The event was the fourth annual Safe Colleges Conference and brought together an estimated 300 students to learn how to effectuate change in a college campus.
The Safe Colleges Conference was made possible by a large contribution from Vice-President of Arts, Science, and Engineering Mel Bernstein's office. The last three conferences were funded by the state of Massachusetts through the governor's Commission for Gay and Lesbian Youth, but the Commonwealth decided to withdraw funding this year, leaving conference organizers an estimated $15,000 short. Bernstein responded to funding requests, supplying money from his Diversity Fund.
"It was a really remarkable thing that Tufts picked up the tab," said Judith Brown, director of Tufts' LGBT center. "It made me feel good about the administration, that they really wanted to support it."
The day-long conference featured a keynote address by Ingrid Rivera-Dessuit, the director of the Racial and Economic Justice Initiative for the Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Rivera-Dessuit shared her personal experiences as a lesbian and minority mother. She also spoke about her role as a researcher and activist in the fields of racial and economic justice, and their relation to LGBT issues.
Rivera-Dessuit's speech addressed the difficulties of forming multi-faceted identities that are often faced by homosexual people of color. She encouraged the audience to "change the face of queer politics" and become actively aware and inclusive of its minority constituents.
Rivera-Dessuit said minorities identify as minorities first, and LGBT second. Because the LGBT community consists primarily of white people, she said, "the face of gay liberation becomes white" and the white majority promotes the white experience as the norm.
"What does my whiteness have to do with my queerness," she said.
After the speech, conference attendees divided into groups to attend workshops led by local educators, professionals, and grassroots activists. Over 20 separate groups focused on issues such as domestic violence, drug use, marriage laws, and body image and how they pertain to the LGBT community.
The goal of the conference, according to organizer Shou Min Tan, a Tufts senior, was to "increase networking opportunities for LGBT students in the New England area."
Tufts commits a significant amount of funding to the LGBT community through the LGBT center, which employs a full-time director. Tufts' center offers resources to the LGBT community unheard of at some schools that attended the conference, according to Brown.
The conference is an effort to "empower students with the knowledge and tools to shape campus life," Tan said.
The conference was advertised through e-mails and newspaper advertisements, and attendees came from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine, as well as Massachusetts. In its four-year existence, the conference has expanded in both scope and size, and many New England schools now take for granted that it will remain an annual event.
Laurie Moran, a senior at Salem State College, attended the conference to gather information that might be of interest to the LGBT community at her school.
"We sort of had a rash of hate crimes on our campus this semester. It was dealt with at the time, but then [the school] forgot about it," she said. The conference ended Saturday night with an open mic Poetry Slam in Brown & Brew, and a dance and drag show in Hotung Caf?©.
