October 14, 2004
New Q Center is ready in spirit
The physical space for the University’s new Q Center isn’t complete yet, but in spirit, the center’s work is already well under way.
The Q Center is a new office preparing to open in Schmitz Hall in the next month or so. Its mission is to provide education and support for gay, lesbian, bisexual, “two-spirit” and transgender students, faculty and staff, as well as their friends, allies and supporters.
About the Q Center: Its vision: The University of Washington Q Center envisions queer (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex) and allied people as fully included and affirmed in every aspect of the UW community where justice, equality, compassion, and respect for all people prevail. Its mission: The University of Washington Q Center provides a comprehensive range of education, information, advocacy, consciousness-raising, skill-building, and support services to achieve a socially-just campus in which all people are valued. |
The center is being overseen and will be run by Jennifer Self, a graduate student in social work who is also a trained therapist. The center will be located in 755 square feet of remodeled office space on Schmitz’s fourth floor. Its shoestring budget, provided by the UW vice presidents for student affairs and minority affairs, provides a part-time graduate assistantship for Self and $5,000 in initial operating costs for the center.
Self said the name Q Center could be short for “queer” — a word that figures prominently in the center’s literature —or for “questioning,” which matches in tone the sort of education and consciousness-raising work the center hopes to do. And though the doors have yet to open, the center has already started interacting with the campus community.
“In terms of the work of the center, we’ve been incredibly busy with outreach,” Self said. “We did three workshops for Dawg Daze to welcome freshmen, and talked about resources on campus and beyond. And we also were on the panel discussion following all the social issues plays the students put on every year.”
She said the center now has a large governing board that includes faculty, staff, students and alumni. “I think we have a great board — they’re incredibly diverse in terms of how they interact with the University. And we’re always going to keep it half students.” Faculty members of the board are Crispin Thurlow of communications and Karen Frederiksen-Goldsen of social work.
Thurlow said the center marks both a symbolic and practical step for the University. “As someone who came as a gay faculty member new to the campus, I was surprised a university in Seattle, with the most amazing equal opportunity programs, didn’t have this kind of resource available,” he said. “I think it’s fantastic that it’s there now, and an important recognition by the University that this is probably something that was missing, a gap that needed to be filled.”
Board member Jeffrey Aquino, a UW staffer who is the student leadership advisor for the Ethnic Cultural Center and Theatre, said the center will provide a needed voice for people with sexual identity and gender issues. “When speaking with students of color, when students don’t feel like they have a place of their own, they feel ostracized and not a part of the campus community,” Aquino said. “By having a space to call their own, they have that connection and belonging.”
Self said the center will offer advice and counsel, but that there will naturally be limits. “When concerns rise to the level of ongoing assistance, that’s when I have to make referrals. I can’t be their therapist,” she said.
The decision to create such a center came from a 2001 report by the President’s Task Force on Gay, Bisexual, Lesbian and Transgender Issues titled “Affirming Diversity: Moving from Tolerance to Acceptance and Beyond.” Self has said she hopes to someday work herself out of a job, when people with sexual and gender identity issues are accepted “without hesitation or prejudice.”
Self said she expects the center’s space might be ready in November, but that a grand opening will likely not be held until January, 2005.
Self said the basic aim of the center is “to create a central hub of information and education possibilities for students, faculty and staff regarding issues of sexuality and gender identity.” She said she has met with almost unanimous support from faculty and students on campus.
Though that support is helpful, Self said that students who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender are still being discriminated against, on campus and off. The center will work against that, she said.
“My belief around coming out and being an ‘out’ person is that shame can make a person a lightning rod for derogatory remarks,” Self said. “But there is no shame in the center.”
