Spectrum, LSU’s LGBT and allies student organization, is making great strides for the queer community here at LSU. However, the group is seeing little involvement or support from the administration.
Just last week, Spectrum painted the campus various colors as it invited us all to celebrate National Coming Out Day.
This week, if you stop by Free Speech Plaza, you’ll see the organization tabling for Ally week, celebrating the cisgender, a person whose gender identity and biological sex are the same, and straight identifying individuals who support the LGBT community.
That being said, I am proud to call myself an LSU student, as the school is what graduate student of social work Anthony Basco describes as “supportive toward LGBTQ issues.”
Basco is the student coordinator for First Contact Peer Mentoring Program, a vital LSU resource partnering LGBT students seeking help with a peer mentor. The program is a partnership between Spectrum and the Office of Multicultural Affairs.
When I visited the Ally Week table sit, I spoke with Spectrum’s Vice President of Administration Moriah Graham. While we spoke about the strides being made here at LSU, we seemed to come to one conclusion — the administration is failing in comparison to it’s students’ efforts.
Spectrum currently supports First Contact, Louisiana Queer Conference and classroom panels to educate LSU students.
“The problem is that we’re only students. We’re doing this around class and jobs,” Graham said.
She makes a valid point — the students at LSU have so much on their plates already. They shouldn’t have the added burden of improving LSU’s policies. That should be the job of LSU’s administration.
Perhaps the most disappointing shortcoming of LSU is its lack of LGBT academic program.
Sure, there are programs, such as women’s and gender studies, which skirt around the issues facing those in the community, but how can we expect to see a change in the attitudes in our community if we aren’t acknowledging that this group of individuals exists at all?
Our university is located deep in the heart of the bible belt, and unfortunately that means there is danger for the LGBT community.
Our own LSU student government is working with Spectrum to improve the quality of life for transgender students, as the two groups are in the works for a project that would allow students to change their name in Moodle, which Basco feels will protect those students from being outed, as most professors print their rosters from Moodle.
Graham, however, feels that there is a greater need for the administration to help in the fight for LGBT students.
“There is a place for students, but it shouldn’t be up to students,” she stated.
Along with the inability to change names on university documents to reflect transgender status and a lack of academic programs, there is a lack of accountability for transphobic and homophobic teachers. That’s not something that the students can reprimand, and the potential for an ugly scandal is there as long as LSU administrators don’t work to prevent it.
While I admire and applaud Graham and Basco along with the rest of the LSU community that is working to improve our campus in respect to LGBT relations, I feel the burden is being unfairly placed on their shoulders.
As the policy states, LSU works toward equal opportunity for all qualified persons in admission to and participation in Univeristy operated programs and activities, regardless of sexual orientation, sex or a number of other ways we differ as a student body.
It’s about time administrators take the initiative, seeing as some of their students are working harder to bring truth to those words than they are.
Jana King is a 19-year-old women’s and gender studies sophomore from Ponchatoula.