The Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) at Quinnipiac University isn’t giving up in its quest to make the school more inclusive. Since the Title IX incident last week in which a student left because he was bullied for his sexual orientation, there were numerous discussions among students and faculty.
“The response from the students has been pretty good,” said Athena Cuttle, senior psychology major and the president of the GSA. “People showing up to the protest, it was a good amount of people. People that have reached out, especially friends I haven’t talked to in a long time, the reception’s been so good.”
The protest on the steps of the library occurred Wednesday and Thursday of last week and included students from all majors and years.
“There’s been a lot of professors that have also reached out,” Cuttle said. “One professor even came to the E-board meeting to stop by and say hello which I thought was pretty cool.”
Cuttle also explained that the GSA and administration are having frequent meetings that have addressed crucial topics.
“Last night I was in a meeting with a lot of people,” Cuttle said. “The meeting ended up being almost an hour and a half. They’re listening which is nice, and they’re willing to start working on change.”
The GSA and administration have been discussing the creation of a safe living space where incidents like the one last week would be less frequent.
“We’ve been discussing the LLC (Living Learning Communities) that we want to create,” Cuttle said. “We discussed that at length. It seems like they’re finally willing to agree to do the Campus Pride Index, which will be a really good self assessment so that they can see where they stand and how they can improve.”
The Campus Pride Index is the premier LGBTQ national benchmarking tool for colleges and universities to create safer, more inclusive campus communities. Students and faculty can search a database of LGBTQ friendly campuses on the website.
“I’ve had meetings with Res Life, and we’re working really hard to get (the LLC),” Cuttle said. “But the issue we’re having right now is word choice. We don’t want to make it just an LGBTQ LLC, because maybe some students aren’t out to their families yet and don’t want to sign on to that, and we also want to make it very inclusive so that way different cultures and identities can come together and learn.”
Cuttle is confident that GSA will be able to continue this work throughout future years because of just how close everyone in the executive board is.
“I’ve reached out to the current e-board, I’ve just explained to them where we stand, and that I’ll always be there,” Cuttle said. “They can call me whenever and I’ll answer and help them figure things out. I’ll be in meetings if they need me in meetings. The GSA president prior to me sits in on meetings, she sends me notes, she helps me figure out what to say next. I feel like with GSA we’ve created such a good friendship with everybody that no matter what we’ll still be there for each other and still work to make sure everyone’s got what they need.”