LGBTQ

Mason earns top honors from Campus Pride Index

Melanie Balog — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 13:40:00 +0000

Mason earns top honors from Campus Pride Index Melanie Balog Thu, 06/02/2022 - 09:40

Mason is one of only 29 universities in the U.S. to receive the highest distinction from the Campus Pride Index.

��ӽ紫ý has been recognized as a “five-star premier campus” by Campus Pride Index, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to creating safer LGBTQ-friendly learning environments at colleges and universities.

Mason is one of only 29 U.S. institutions, out of 454 evaluated, with a five-star premier ranking, one of only three in the South, and the only one in Virginia.

Additionally, Mason is one of just 40 four-year campuses across the country, and the only public institution in Virginia, recognized by Campus Pride in its "Best of the Best" list of LGBTQ-friendly colleges and universities in the United States. It also is one of only four institutions nationally to score a perfect 100 on the Athletic Equity Index, which examines how NCAA Division I institutions support LGBTQ student-athletes.

“At a university like ours, which is committed to access and welcoming to all, this sends a huge signal to our existing and prospective students,” said Rose Pascarell, vice president for University Life.

An LGBTQ chalk drawing at Mason.
Photo by Evan Cantwell/Creative Services

“Particularly for the LGBTQIA community, students and parents are often looking for signs,” she added. “That ranking sends a message to students and family and friends that Mason is not just trying to create a welcoming environment, but our practices and policies reflect that.”

Mason has been a leader in creating an LGBTQ+-friendly campus.

The university’s LGBTQ+ Resources Center has operated for 20 years and provides leadership and mentoring programs, and a clothing resource for trans and non-binary students. Mason’s student-led Pride Alliance, the oldest of several LGBTQ+ student organizations on campus, is dedicated to ensuring a safe, accepting space for LGBTQ+ students to live and meet.

Mason’s Living Learning Communities, including the LGBTQ+ Living Learning Community, allow like-minded students to live in the same residence hall, fostering connections and creating access to resources. The university also has a gender-inclusive housing policy for students living outside the Learning Community.

And Mason’s long-running annual “Drag Show,” held at the end of Mason’s PRIDE Week in the spring, draws hundreds of students to a celebration of the movement toward human rights for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

“I knew the university promotes a lot of its diversity initiatives,” said William Barker, a freshman cyber security engineering major, who during the next academic year will be the chair of Mason’s Queer Student Leadership Council. “It was a factor because I wanted to make sure I was going to be comfortable at the school I was going to.”

Juniper Mortimer, a rising junior majoring in government and international politics and a peer mentor with the LGBTQ+ Resources Center, said they were bolstered during the pandemic lockdown, when the resources center and Pride Alliance held virtual events so LGBTQ+ students could interact.

“I have been able to make all of my friends and connections,” Mortimer said, “and the Pride Index is a very good indicator that there is a space for anybody on Mason’s Campus.”

��ӽ紫ý LGBTQ+ Resources Center staff and volunteers at the Capital Pride Festival in Washington, DC.
photo credit: University Life

Most important, said Josh Kinchen, director of the LGBTQ+ Resources Center, is not treating the LGBTQ+ community as a monolith, because it intersects with every demographic.

“We’re working with folks with all the pieces of their identity — undocumented, first-gen, veterans — instead of seeing them only in their sexuality and gender,” Kinchen said. “For an institution of our size and prestige, that is incredibly unique. But we can’t do it any other way, and that’s why we’ve had so much success.”

As for the index, “It shows that there is a true vibrancy here that we can prove.,” he said. “But it’s also a tool for us to hold ourselves accountable to say we have to live up to this now.”

So far, so good, Mortimer said.

“Mason has one of the most accepting and diverse environments I’ve been part of,” they said. “It’s been an amazing experience. If you’re looking for something like that, definitely come to Mason.”

Visit the LGBTQ Resource Center

Events

6/3/2023 Fairfax Pride

8/23/2023 Lavender Orientation

10/2/2023 LGBTQ+ History Month Kickoff

4/30/2024 Pride Week Drag Show

4/23/2024 Lavender & Women and Gender Studies Graduation

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He has a message he wants to carry worldwide

Colleen Rich — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 13:29:18 +0000

He has a message he wants to carry worldwide Colleen Rich Wed, 03/30/2022 - 09:29

Casey Klemmer. Photo provided

Before he took the class Transnational Sexualities at ��ӽ紫ý with Associate Professor Rachel Lewis, Casey Klemmer had not heard anything about transgender people outside of Virginia.

So when Klemmer, then a sophomore from Fairfax, Virginia, learned the extent of that population, “It was amazing to me,” he recalled. “It wasn’t just a Fairfax thing. It wasn’t just a U.S. thing. It was all over the world.”

Klemmer, who is transgender and queer, carries that sensibility into his work as lead center mentor at Mason’s Women and Gender Studies Center and as a graduate student coordinator at Mason’s LGBTQ+ Resources Center.

“Community can be found anywhere,” said Klemmer, BA Integrative Studies ’21, who is pursuing a master’s degree in interdisciplinary studies with a concentration in social justice and human rights. “You don’t need to be limited to the people in your immediate space.”

With his bachelor’s concentration in Women and Gender Studies and his master’s focused on transgender refugees and asylum seekers, Klemmer said he hopes to work overseas, and is traveling to Spain in the summer.

“I really want to go somewhere where I can get immersed in the culture and help trans people to have better places to live and have better lives,” he said.

“He’s developed into one of our strongest student leaders,” said David Corwin, associate director of Women and Gender Studies. “He’s the epitome of someone who takes what he does very seriously. He’s constantly works for ways to develop himself, and he’s a shining example of feminist values and our values at Mason.”

Klemmer was also the first students to sign up for Mason’s minor in LGBTQ Studies.

It was that program, he said, and his work in Women and Gender Studies that helped set his educational path and was personally affirming.

A paper he researched in his Transnational Sexualities class on Hijras, a community of transgender and intersex people who are considered India’s third gender, was particularly enlightening.

“It was a great experience for me to see people who have similar experiences to myself all over the world,” Klemmer said. “It was sort of a way of talking about myself in academia and having it matter.”

It also was part of the process of forming the message he delivers to LGBTQ+ students at Mason.

“For me, it was helpful to widen my view of what community could look like,” Klemmer said. “We have lots of students, first years and people who have been here for a while, who feel like they don’t have communities. And so that class changed my perspective on what community could look like. Your immediate people near you are not the limit.”

Topics

Students

LGBTQ

Women and Gender Studies

Mason graduate student helps create LGBTQIA community through mentoring program

Colleen Rich — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 16:14:07 +0000

Mason graduate student helps create LGBTQIA community through mentoring program Colleen Rich Mon, 03/28/2022 - 12:14

Dan Kingsley. Photo provided

Dan Kingsley, a graduate professional assistant in ��ӽ紫ý’s LBGTQ+ Resources Center, helps to create community through the center’s peer mentoring program. The program links up lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and ally-identified first-year students with mentors to help promote their personal and academic success, health, and well-being. Kingsley also helps facilitate Identity Nights in which people of similar identities can connect.

“I like to call it a built-in buddy system to help students and create spaces where we can foster community engagement,” said Kingsley, who is working on a master's in psychology concentrating in cognitive and behavioral neuroscience. “As someone who is at the intersection of being autistic and queer, I have sometimes not had the resources I need or spaces to meet other people with similar identities. I’m most proud when I hear about students finding the spaces we’ve created helpful.”

The LGBTQ+ Resources Center hosts monthly get-togethers for mentees. To start off the year, the center held a virtual murder mystery puzzle.

“That was a great group bonding activity,” Kingsley said. “They had so much fun with it.”

Kingsley also co-advises the Queer Student Leadership Council (QSLC) with Joshua Kinchen, director of the LGBTQ+ Resources Center.

“Dan has been an essential part of our staff team this year,” Kinchen said. “Dan’s thoughtfulness, instincts, and insights are all part of why we've enjoyed so much success on campus this year.”

Kingsley earned his undergraduate degree in psychology at the University of Northern Colorado. He picked Mason for his graduate studies because he wanted to work with Allison Jack, assistant professor of cognitive and behavioral neuroscience with a specialty in autism spectrum disorder in the Department of Psychology. Kingsley’s lab work is focused on biological sex and autism.

Kingsley, a transgender man, said that in his classes, “there are moments for me when I realize I am with people who don’t always know how to respect pronouns.”

Kingsley said that his work at the center gives him “community and comfort.”

“My position working with the resource center has me surrounded by people I know respect and understand me,” Kingsley said. “It’s a great group.”

LuLu Géza Kelemen, assistant director of the LGBTQ+ Resources Center said that “Dan has a particular skill for listening” and “has been a driving force behind some of our newer programs that are responsive to student needs and wants.”

“Dan embodies so much of what success can look like for LGBTQ+ students at Mason,” said Géza Kelemen, who is also an instructor in Women and Gender Studies.