Q Center reaches five-year mark

Binghamton University’s Q Center turns 5 this year. The original impetus for the creation of the center came from two initiatives, according to then-Chief Diversity Officer Valerie Hampton.

“First, the University Strategic Planning process that President [Harvey] Stenger initiated after he arrived on campus in 2012. The faculty, staff and students that participated had discussed creation of affinity groups and LGBTQ was one of them,” Hampton said. “The second was a group of faculty, staff and students who, together with the Women and Sexuality Studies Department, met to discuss LGBTQ initiatives and development of a survey of LGBTQ needs and experiences. There was certainly some crossover participation of persons on both activities.”

The need for the Q Center came from both initiatives, Hampton said, along with incorporating it into the new Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion that was in development.

“It became clear from the subsequent Campus Climate survey that there was a need to develop a space and place to address the LGBTQ campus community,” she said. “There was diverse interest and support for the creation of the Q Center and to this day you will always find students and staff programming on campus and in community collaborations.”

The creation of the Q Center is living affirmation of Binghamton University’s commitment to creating and supporting an inclusive environment that reflects our human diversity every day, Hampton added. “I’m pleased to have been a part of that institutional growth during my tenure,” she said.

When Kelly Clark arrived at Binghamton University in April 2016 as the founding director of the Q Center, she got right to work, and the center was open at the beginning of the fall 2016 semester. We sat down with Clark recently to talk about the center, its goals and its aspirations.

Getting a new center off the ground is a heavy lift. What was the first thing you had to tackle?

When I first got here, the Multicultural Resource Center (MRC) was in what would become our space. It was beige and brown. Those first few months were all about paint and ordering furniture. What was the personality of the space going to be?

I think that if you look at a business startup, they’re in startup phase for about seven to nine years, trying to figure out what they’re doing and what they want to be. We fit that same model even though we’re not a business. Over these five years we’ve been asking and looking at ‘What do the students need? What does this campus need? What makes sense as a University investment? What is the return on investment for having a center on campus?’

I’ve discovered that our students do really good work. We started out doing a lot of programs, and I quickly discovered that our LGBTQ student organizations do lots of good programming so the return on the University’s investment in us wasn’t for us [the center] to do more programing. The work has really been more about creating community on campus and the center is well at the center of that!

Over the years, we’ve found that the students who use our space skew a bit more to the STEM and business majors. We think the students in majors like the arts, theater, HDEV, the social sciences — these students easily find each other. They talk with each other in classes and are learning about each other; students in the STEM disciplines and business are often in labs or classes where they’re busy but not getting to know their partners. The center has become a great place to meet people and have those more personal and identity-based conversations. I think that’s a real testament to the center’s ability to create community.

Tell us about the center’s initiatives.

The work has been about building the space and creating a few signature programs that make sense for University-wide initiatives and impact with programs like International Pronouns Day to help people learn more about trans and non-binary gender identities. Our Pegasus First Year Experience Program supports incoming LGBTQ students and allies from the time of acceptance at the university through the end of their first semester. We have developed a strong consulting role that supports the development of policies and procedures across campus or simply to answer questions from our colleagues in the rest of the institution. For example, one professor who was concerned that a lesson plan and slide deck she developed may have made transgender students feel uncomfortable because her topic was specifically gendered. She asked for help in thinking through teaching the topic in a way that was less gendered. We get those kinds of questions often. And we have our University partners — we’ve worked with Student Records and ITS on the Chosen Name Policy; with the Fleishmen Center on updates to their career resources for LGBTQ students; with the University Training and Development Center to help us roll out our LGBTQ Active Ally Program to employees.

What is your daily routine like?

A lot of what I do is directing students to help us do the center’s work. Even though people go to class for their education, I’m an educator, too. We have one Graduate Assistant, four to six undergraduate interns, one to two graduate interns and 25 or so undergraduate volunteers who work with us. So a lot of what I’m doing is helping our grads learn their jobs and how to supervise our undergrads. Of course I’m also on several campus committees because the LGBTQ voice and perspective is important.

Have you met what you established as the center’s goals for its first five years?

I believe that, in our first five years, everybody who is paying attention knows that we have a center on campus. For the first four years, whenever I went to speak anywhere I would ask how many know that we exist. And by 2019, pretty much every hand went up, so I think people understand that we’re here.

One big five-year goal was to do a better job of supporting transgender students who wish to medically transition during their time here. With the work of our University partners, the University Counseling Center and the Decker Student Health Center, we have been able to reach that goal in the first four years. Students wishing to transition can do so with the support of medical providers at home or in Binghamton and our on campus providers track their progress providing necessary care while they are on campus. We have begun to partner with the Volunteer Lawyers Project of Onondaga County to offer workshops on their free Name & Gender Marker Change clinics. Today, we are very proud that we can support students in finding all of the resources they would need to graduate and enter their professional life as the person they know themselves to be.

What is the Safe Zone - Active Ally program?

The first three years of the center it was just me and students to get the work done. The University had a Safe Zone program before, which died out before I came to Binghamton but it was the one thing I just didn’t have time to restart. Ian Shick started with us as a Graduate Assistant from the Student Affairs Administration Program in CCPA. I noticed right away that they had great skills in workshop development and facilitation. I was able to keep Ian on to specifically to work to build and roll out our Active Ally program. The program is multi-tiered; currently we are working on Tier I. It’s a six-workshop series that focuses on understanding LGBTQ+ identities and what it means to actively support the LGBTQ+ community. In the first year and a half it has really taken off among faculty and staff. Even tenured faculty come and it’s often hard to get tenured faculty to come out for something like this. We’ve also had entire staffs like a lot of the library staff.

Can you say more about your First-year Experience program?

Our Pegasus FYE program front-loads support to our students’ during their first semester. Through Pegasus we offer an orientation program for about 80-100 students each fall. We also offer a UNIV 101 FYE course called ABCs of LGBTQ: Histories, Identities, and Cultures. This is a hybrid class co-taught with a student affairs professional. Student are exposed to various resources like the Fleishman Center and library staff, but its also a safe place to learn and talk about LGBTQ identities. It gets rave reviews each year. Lastly, we offer first year students who have been high school leaders a “small L” leadership opportunity through the Pegasus FYE Programming Board. These students come together to plan monthly events for their peers. It’s a great way for members of the class to continue to build friendships and community.

We understand you’re retiring at the end of the semester. What would you say to someone stepping in to fill your position?

If I were to stay, the next program I would put together would be a senior-year program to bookend the FYE course — a capstone. The support the first-year students need coming in is the same support seniors need going out. ‘How do I come out to my employer? How do I choose an employer? What is my level of comfort?’ There’s a nice bookend to think about how to launch them as LGBTQ professionals. I would encourage a new director to explore this opportunity.

A big return on investment could also be supporting our students in healthy relationships and sex education. This is something LGBTQ students do not get. Some come from great school districts where they get great information but it’s general, others get nothing. Then add in the layers of gender identity/expression. I would love to see us do something and identify a couple of really positive sex educators to work with. I think it would make a difference for our students as they are exiting our institution. Students are doing in a vacuum in college what they didn’t do in high school, and doing it by themselves. That’s not healthy.

In our five years, the center has served mostly students, even though working with employees is in our mission. Employees just don’t participate, so I would like to see an ongoing, collaborative effort between the Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Human Resources to develop an Employee Resource Group for LGBTQ employees.

Finally, I would also love to see us get to the second half of our mission statement: to support success of LGBTQ students, faculty and staff and to serve as a catalyst for LGBTQ scholarship. We are doing a better job of connecting with our alumni, but we need leaders who can help raise some money to support undergraduate researchers who want to do research in LGBTQ issues. I would love to see us have a TAE [Transdisciplinary Area of Excellence]. There’s an opportunity to have some synergy around this scholarship. How do I market to non-binary people or how do I work with transgender women in pharmacy? There’s an opportunity to touch LGBTQ research in every school and it would be great to support.