De Costa, Jonathan

Elder, Sara

English

DigitalCommons@Bryant University

The opening of the GLBTQ Center began with a March forInclusiveness around campus. Jonathan and I organized theentire event—everything from speakers to advertising. Wedidn’t expect many people—we knew from experience thatwhen events focused on anything related to the GLBTQcommunity, they were not very successful. So the turnoutwas unexpected. Over 30 people came, and the studentscame from many organizations on campus. Many of thepeople were part of Bryant’s administration and had helpedus achieve our goals. Among them were President RonaldMachtley and Dr. Eakin.We hope that the GLBTQ Center and gender neutral housingwill inspire more GLBTQ students to consider Bryant as aschool. We want the student population to diversify, justlike Bryant is diversifying their academic programs to includemore liberal arts. The GLBTQ Center will supplement genderneutral housing by giving students a place to further exploretheir identities.The GLBTQ Center is already in operation, and gender neutralhousing will begin the Fall 2012 semester. We take comfortin knowing future generations of Bryant students will beable to feel safe and included where they live. Even if it onlymakes one student on campus feel safer, it’ll be worth it.20 GETBY SARA ELDER AND JONATHAN DE COSTAGET 21to pay for the table. The suitemate responded by makingthreatening gestures and calling him a faggot.After this, Jonathan didn’t feel safe living with him. The nextyear’s housing lottery would be taking place soon, so we wentto the director of Residence Life to propose living together.But there was no policy in place regarding opposite sex room-mates. So we decided to go to the Vice President of StudentAffairs, Dr. Thomas Eakin, who understood our reasoningbut couldn’t do anything for next year’s housing. This meantwe would both have to find same-sex suites to live in. Despite this, we decided that it was important to fight forgender neutral housing, even if it wouldn’t directly benefit us.We wanted to spend Jonathan’s last year at Bryant makingsure nobody else had to go through what he did. He wantedto leave the campus knowing he had made a difference.With the help of Bryant Pride gender neutral housing becameanother top priority. Bryant Pride had submitted severalproposals over the years for a GLBTQ Center, so we didn’texpect to receive one anytime soon, let alone gender neutralhousing—which would require a huge policy change. Wejust wanted to start the long process so the students afterus would have a foundation for change.Bryant University might be known prima-rily as a business school, but that doesn’tmean it’s not progressive. In fact, Bryant isamong about 5% of four-year universities inthe United States that have enacted somesort of gender neutral housing on campus.In the same year, Bryant has set asidespace for a GLBTQ Center which openedNovember 30, 2011. Our school is areminder that progress and business can gohand in hand. Through Bryant Pride, our gay-straight alliance, we foughtfor equality on campus. We both joined the organizationas soon as we came to Bryant. Jonathan is a senior andcurrently the vice president and Sara is a junior and thesecretary. For the past few years, our focus has been bringinga GLBTQ center to Bryant.In 2010, it became clear that a GLBTQ center wouldn’t beenough. Students needed to feel safe in their dorms as well.Jonathan experienced first-hand the ignorance and misun-derstanding that can lead people to act on their hatred.His suitemate, in a drunken rage, broke a university-issuedcoffee table, so Jonathan told him he was going to haveEYE ON PRIDEUNIVERSITY’S INCLUSIVITYWe had a lot of support from faculty and staff; Judy McDonnell,a professor of sociology and one of the founders of BryantPride, spent a significant amount of time trying to convincethe administration of the benefits of gender neutral housing.She was one of the first people to find out when genderneutral housing was passed. We were the first ones she told,even though she wasn’t sure it was completely official.We set up a meeting with Dr. Eakin to find out the logisticsand how the change would actually be implemented. The pilotprogram would begin in Bryant’s newest dormitory, Hall 17,because it’s the only residence hall that has two bathrooms ineach suite. This would give students the option to designatebathrooms by sex if they chose to. Up to three suites wouldbe set as gender neutral. Prior to housing selection, students can opt to be in a genderneutral suite and would go through a separate housing lottery.Similar to other schools with gender neutral housing options,students are discouraged from living with their partners.We didn’t expect the news to come this quickly; we expectedto spend all year fighting for this, so getting it before thefirst semester was over was startling. At the same time, theschool was allotting space in the student center for the newGLBTQ Center, and the opening was in a few weeks. BRYANT’SPAUL DEWOLF, BRYANT’S UNIVERSITY RELATIONSBRYANT PRIDE EXECUTIVE BOARDSara Elder, SECRETARYJonathan De Costa, VICE PRESIDENTMatt Dutkiewicz, TREASURERMichael Shypski, PRESIDENTHALL 17PHOTOGRAPHY: SARA ELDER

Bryant\u27s Eye on Pride

https://digitalcommons.bryant.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&amp;context=library_misc

Bryant\u27s Eye on Pride

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