Queer and trans black, indigenous, and people of color (QTBIPOC): the sun of LGBTQ + rainbow

Abstract

SOL: Multicultural LGBTQ + Support Network (SOL) is an initiative at Oregon State University (OSU) that uplifts students who are at the intersections between queer and trans identities and nonwhite racialized identities. Historically, OSU is a predominantly white institution, with major student-led activism that has shifted the progressive course of the school. SOL was born when a Black gay graduate student noticed a communal gap and founded a support group that upholds LGBTQ + students of color (QTBIPOC students). Emulating the spirit of SOL’s founder, its core goal is to highlight the voices and activism of QTBIPOC students. Structure-wise, SOL is designed to be in interdependent relationships with other institutional cultural centers, allowing it to envision shared leadership with a focus on the holistic wellbeing of SOL student staff as well as the QTBIPOC students it serves. SOL’s impacts are felt by multiple QTBIPOC-related communities on campus. Nevertheless, the lessons learned from SOL are also a reminder of perseverance to keep advocating for further QTBIPOC-student-centered institutional support. Through this brief report, we hope other colleges could study and apply judiciously to their schools what SOL practices to elevate the overall campus and academic experiences of QTBIPOC students everywhere.

Keywords:

• LGBTQ+, queer
• trans, people of color, QTBIPOC, Oregon, SOL, institutional change

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 At the moment of writing, the authors were institutional members of SOL. Cindy Konrad, a white queer woman, had been working as SOL’s center director for eight years. Trung M. Nguyen, an Asian genderqueer individual, worked closely with SOL and its director as a graduate student assistant. It is important to address the authors’ positionalities with SOL and our proximities to both the institution and the students because while they offer rich insights about SOL, they might have also limited and biased our analysis.

2 As the concepts of gender and sexuality keep evolving in the public eyes, the inclusive language used to describe them also expands; hence various versions of acronyms to represent the diverse experience of the queer community exist.

LGBTQ+: we chose this acronym to depict the queer community at large because it is what SOL uses currently in its official name.

QTBIPOC: an acronym to address some of the more marginalized groups within both the LGBTQ + and non-white communities. We chose this version because of its popular usage within the field of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. For instance, it has been used by various LGBTQ + centers in colleges across the U.S. and by the Human Rights Campaign (https://www.hrc.org/news/lgbtq-history-month-qtbipoc-leaders). In this report, we use QTBIPOC to address the LGBTQ + students of color community.

3 OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center, Oregon State University. (31 Aug 2023). Minorities in the Barometer, 1973. Retrieved from https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/df71wz44h.

Natalia Fernández, Curator of the Oregon Multicultural Archives and OSU Queer Archives, archived the collections of articles. Luhui Whitebear, Assistant Professor of ­Indigenous Studies and former center director for the Kaku-Ixt Mana Ina Haws, conducted research within the archives and unearthed this history of inter-community work.

4 https://institutionalresearch.oregonstate.edu/enrollment-and-demographic-reports.

Data retrieved on 31 August, 2023.

5 See 2015 Session: Senate Bill 473 at https://gov.oregonlive.com/bill/2015/SB473/ .

6 Student employees or student staff are students who work for the university, in this case the university’s CRCs.

7 The Ina Haws centers Indigenous identities on campus and is one of the CRCs.

8 All SOL interviewees reported here are QTBIPOC student staff from diverse academic, racial and gender identity backgrounds.

9 “Failing forward” is a concept introduced by Velyn Scarborough, Director of Experiential Learning and Activities at OSU, in her March 2019 presentation “Creating a Culture of Resilience, Innovation and Leadership by Failing Forward”, which helped frame our current understanding of the importance of iteration and learning from mistakes in our work.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Trung M. Nguyen

Trung M. Nguyen, Mx, PhD student and Graduate Student Employee, Oregon State University, School of Language, Culture, and Society; Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program. Graduate Student Assistant of SOL: LGBTQ + Multicultural Support Network.

Cindy Konrad

Cindy Konrad, Ms, Center Director of Pride Center and SOL: LGBTQ + Multicultural Support Network, Oregon State University, Department of Diversity & Cultural Engagement, Division of Student Affairs.