Q Center, fall 2021
During the summer months, the Q Center (QC) hosted two events through the First-Year Experience program to generate early commitment and excitement for QC programming. The first event, held July 21, was a virtual icebreaker that welcomed about 15 students and provided first-year students the opportunity to get to know one another. The second event, held Aug. 4, was also virtual. This event was an online escape room that exposed first-year students to various QC resources through an engaging, interactive experience.
The targeted first-year welcome events culminated in Rainbow 2.0, an in-person showing of the movie Booksmart that features a queer storyline and is appropriate for students who are beginning their college experience. For this event, video projection equipment was donated to the QC by Andrew Tucci from the Educational Communications Center. While this event was originally an outdoor projection, due to inclement weather, the showing was moved inside to the QC. The event hosted approximately 30 students. However, the assumption is that more students would have been in attendance had the event taken place at its original location.
In addition to our first-year welcome events, the QC continued the UNIV 101 course: ABCs of LGBTQ and held an open house party Sept. 9. This event welcomed the entire LGBTQ+ community to explore the center and was designed to foster inclusivity and reaffirm connection to the LGBTQ+ community at large.
In terms of operations, the QC welcomed seven student employees to the team at the end of August. These student employees serve a multitude of roles in the organization, ranging from student manager to FYE intern to programming and events. A comprehensive student manager training program took place from 1-3 p.m. Sept. 11, to provide information about LGBTQ+ competency in addition to on-the-job tasks and responsibilities.
The Open House Party welcomed nearly 100 attendees, with representatives attending from the majority of the LGBTQ+ student organizations on campus. The event was loosely structured to allow for open dialogue and communication, with icebreaker-style games midway through the event. Kudos to all our partners who assisted Julia Saltzman, graduate assistant in the Q Center, to make the event a success!
In preparation for both the new student and professional staff who started in their roles in late September, most QC procedures and protocols have been updated for the fall 2021 semester. This includes a transition to Slack for communication between students and staff, and the use of Trello to coordinate tasks. This enables students to accomplish their tasks and ask relevant questions even when staff are not physically present to assist.
Moving forward, the QC is looking to continue its programming initiatives both in-center and within the campus community. We are ambitious to plan our Pride Month (OUTober) programming; however, we are anticipating reduced capacity and it is unlikely that it will be at the same level of previous years. Yet, we are hoping to innovate and create new programming initiatives, such as a gender-affirming pop-up thrift shop, so that we may utilize existing QC resources.