Welcome new students!

On behalf of GLBTQ Services, welcome to Miami University!  If you identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or as a heterosexual ally, we are here for you. We are delighted to have you join our community, and are eagerly looking forward to meeting you. GLBTQ Services is the institutional reference point for the LGBTA community. We provide support, education, and advocacy around issues of sexual orientation and gender identity.

We work closely with Spectrum (our undergraduate LGBTA group) and Haven (our graduate LGBTA group) to provide programs and social opportunities.  You can learn more about all of our programs by signing up for our mailing list (GLBTQnews), liking us on Facebook, and following us on Twitter (GLBTQatMU).

We invite you to meet us in person at the following events!

• GLBTQ Services is a unit of the Office of Diversity Affairs. Visit us at the Resource Fair held from 9:30 – 11:30 AM on Day 2 of your Summer Orientation. Pick up brochures and ask us any questions.
• You are invited to the Rainbow Reception for LGBTA students, staff, and faculty, on August 23 from 4:30 – 6:30 PM in Shriver Heritage Room
• Visit Spectrum at MegaFair on August 26, from 1:00 – 4:00 PM in Millet Hall. And join Spectrum for their meetings each Wednesday at 7:oo PM in Shriver 336.

As you prepare to come to Miami, you probably have lots of questions about the college experience. We encourage you to contact us (glbtq@muohio.edu) and let us know what we can do for you!  Enjoy the rest of the summer, and see you soon!

Rainbow Reception for the LGBTA Community

As another academic year draws to a close, it is time to start thinking ahead to the fall! GLBTQ Services would like to enlist your participation in a brand new event, one of the strategic priorities that came out of the Love, Honor, and Pride Summit back in March.  We are working to connect with new students, new faculty, and new students at the beginning of each school year.

The Rainbow Reception will provide an opportunity for new and current members of the Miami family to get to know each other, identify common interests, and share resources. At the event, we will break up into several different interest groups (with topics like “forming a reading group” or “LGBT theater” or anything else that sparks your interest), so that you can meet people with similar interests. Each interest group will have one or two hosts, who will help keep the conversation going.

What you can do:

• Save the date of August 23 from 4:30 – 6:30.
• Sign up to attend the Rainbow Reception.
• Volunteer to host an interest group.
• Help us advertise the event to new and current members of the community.
• Email glbtq@muohio.edu with any questions.

Please join us in welcoming new members of our community!

Lavender Graduation

Lavender Graduation

Sunday, April 29 at 12:30 PM

Sesquicentennial Chapel

Reception to follow in the Heritage Room, Shriver

Lavender Graduation is a time to celebrate the past year, and congratulate our graduates. This is the 11^th year we are celebrating Lavender Graduation! We are proud of the successes of this year, including:

• 23 Safe Zone trainings, with over 160 participants.
• A record 1,526 signatures on our annual National Coming Out Day ad!
• Miami Hamilton’s GSA hosted a three-part LGBT film series.
• Pride Panels reached 600 people just in the fall semester.
• Love, Honor, and Pride Summit brought 40 people together to plan for our future.
• LGBT Awareness Week, with two special guests, campus wide visibility, and a Pride Parade that carried on despite the rain.

We invite all graduates (even if you can’t make it to the event) to register with us so that we can celebrate you! Graduates are invited to select someone who will introduce them to the audience and share some of their experiences. Graduates will receive a special rainbow tassel and a lavender cord to wear with their graduation robes.

And if you aren’t graduating, you are invited to be part of the celebration! We promise a meaningful afternoon, and some great food at the reception in the Heritage Room. Please join us.

Discrimination at Miami

What do 46 classified staff, 107 unclassified staff, and 75 faculty members think about the climate for LGBT people at Miami University? To learn more about these experiences, please join us for our needs assessment presentation. Campus Commitment: Faculty and Staff Involvement with LGBT Issues Thursday, April 12 12:00 – 1:30 PM MacMillan 212

42% of staff and faculty at Miami say that they have witnessed discrimination against the LGBT community. What does this look like?

Subtle Discrimination

• “It seems like most situations happen non-verbally or there is some unspoken discrimination”
• “I’ve rarely heard anything direct, but I think there are subtle ways in which GLBTQQIA people are excluded/insulted.”
•  “the kind of harassment I have seen is subtle–micro aggressions of students to student and resistance or hostility to certain gender topics in class.”

Different Treatment

• “I feel women are treated differently at Miami and while faculty and staff are great, GLBTQ students face a culture that is not always warm ”
• “It seems that Transgendered individuals are not welcome as a public face of the university.”

Negative Language

• “I hear negative comments sometimes from students.  I know a few fellow staff members who have made comments like well, you know he’s gay, spoken in a tone that makes it clear they think it’s not okay.”
• “Primarily just people using terminology such as ‘that’s so gay’ or similar…however, I have noticed a usage drop and confront it when I find it and it is appropriate.”
• “I don’t believe I have witnessed any events of harassment/discrimination in the past year, but I have many times, throughout my time at Miami, overheard or been involved in conversations in which a person/people make derogatory remarks about gays/lesbians in general or in regard to specific people.”

Overt Discrimination

• “I have been a victim of harassment–items displayed on my door that reflect LGBTQ and/or feminist issues have been stolen from me, and flyers that I’ve had displayed that were advertising LGBTQ events have been removed without my permission.”
• “students, faculty, administrators and staff use euphemisms to (negatively) describe my professional performance.”
• “I have experienced prejudice in my department in the past and still do although it can’t be proven.”

What’s next?

Now that the Summit has come and gone, we want to enlist you in continuing the work! This is how you can help make change on campus. If you are interested in joining the effort surrounding any of these priorities, let us know so that we can work together.

• Outreach to college GSAs. Some students have begun this effort by contacting the Office of Admission.
• Gender neutral housing and restrooms. There is already a group that is working on housing; let me know if you’d like to join that group, or if you’d like to do some work on restrooms.
• LGBTA connections dinner. This is something that will be led by GLBTQ Services, but participants, supporters, and fellow diners will help make it happen!
• Training for faculty and staff. We will need WGS faculty especially in this effort!
• Alumni video project. This will be led by the 1809 LGBT Alumni.

We hope that you will consider joining one or more of these efforts. As always, email glbtq@muohio.edu to get involved!

Summit Update

Thank you so much to the nearly 40 people who showed up to support the Summit last Friday! Together, we gathered ideas, brought them together into plans, and prioritized our community’s needs. It was a fantastic event!

At the Summit, we identified five projects that we will prioritize over the next five years. Watch this space for more information about how we will take these projects on, and how you can be involved in the process!

• Outreach to high school GSAs.
• Gender neutral housing and restrooms.
• LGBTA connections dinner.
• Training for faculty and staff.
• Alumni video project.

We welcome your comments on these projects, and look forward to working with you in making them a reality.

Summit Day!

Today’s the day! We will be gathering in MacMillan 212 at 8:30 AM for coffee and muffins, and starting at 9:00 AM. We are very excited about creating a plan for Miami’s LGBT community. We’re lo0king forward to our day of brainstorming, planning, and connecting. We will be wrapping up by 4:30 PM, in time for Miami’s Pride Parade. Bring your ideas, your willingness to stay engaged, and your concerns. Together, we can build a Miami that we will all be proud of!

Participants and those who cannot join us in person are all invited to join the conversation on Twitter, using the hashtag #LoveHonorPride

Awareness

It’s a beautiful morning in Oxford, and LGBT Awareness Week is still going strong. So far, we’ve enjoyed a gender-bending and affirming performance from LIGHT. We’ve engaged with allies, asking them to show their support. We’ve talked sex with Dr. Ruth. Students staged a queer zoo, in order to demonstrate that LGBT people aren’t rare specimens. JAC discussed the history of drag and the fluidity of gender. And all throughout the week, we’ve been visible and vocal, in order to make everyone on campus aware of the diversity that is within the LGBT community.

And there’s still more! Today we celebrate female-identified writers and artists in conjunction with the Women’s Read-In (sponsored by the Women’s Center and the University Libraries). Tonight is the opening performance of the Laramie Project, a play that asks members of a college town to consider their culpability in homophobic violence. And the week culminates in tomorrow’s Pride Parade, where everyone is invited to march through campus and be visible!

Tomorrow is also our Summit. Whether or not you are participating in the Summit, you are invited to consider awareness on campus. What are we, as the LGBT and allied community, not aware of? Whose concerns are being silenced? What issues do we need to bring to the awareness of the larger Miami community?

Thank you for your support and interest in this process! We hope to hear from you tomorrow and in the future as we continue this work.

 

LGBT Awareness Week

We are proud to host the Love, Honor, and Pride Summit on the final day of LGBT Awareness Week. This allows us to wrap up the Summit with our 4th Annual Pride Parade at 4:30 PM!

Awareness Week is designed to provide  greater visibility for the LGBT community on campus.  We are hosting gender-bending performances, chances to participate in drag, celebrations of diverse sexuality, reminders of our history, programs for allies, and opportunities to be loud and vocal about who we are. We hope you can join us for these events! Follow all our events on Twitter (@GLBTQatMU).

March 19 – 21	Visibility Project (#LoveVISIBILITY) Monday- Allies Day Tuesday- Queers in Captivity Wednesday- Politics Day Slant Walk/Hub
March 19 7:30 pm	Guest Speaker: LIGHT aka DRED (#LoveLIGHT) LIGHT is a Haitian-American actress who is also a self-love educator, gender alchemist, diversity appreciation = sexuality, gender, race. LIGHT Facebook Event http://www.dredlove.com/ MPR A-B, Shriver
March 20 7 pm	Diversity is Sexy, with Dr. Ruth (#LoveSEX) Part of DAC’s Diversity Week FSB 1000
March 21 6 pm	The Art of Drag with JAC Stringer (#LoveJAC) Bring any clothes, make-up, etc. if you want to participate in a hands-on way- no need to bring supplies to attend! Psychology 125
March 22 11 am – 2 pm	Women’s Read-in King Library, room 320
March 22 4:30 PM	Zach Wahls (part of DAC’s Diversity Week) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSQQK2Vuf9Q McGuffey 322
March 22 8 pm	Laramie Project (#LoveMatthew) Leonard Theater, Peabody Hall
March 23 8:30 am – 4 pm	Love, Honor, and Pride Summit (#LoveProgress) MacMillan 212
March 23 4:30 pm	Pride Parade (#LovePRIDE) Parade Facebook Event starts at the Phi Delt Gates
March 23 8 pm	Laramie Project (#LoveMatthew) Leonard Theater, Peabody Hall
March 23 11 pm	Spectrum Drag Show (#LoveDRAG) proceeds benefit GLSEN StadiUM Bar and Grille
March 24 2:30 pm	Laramie Project (#LoveMatthew) Leonard Theater, Peabody Hall

Conference Call Questions

Yesterday, we held a pre-summit conference call to share perspectives on Miami and discuss our priorities for the summit. While progress has been made over the past several years, we still have a long way to go. We identified a few questions to consider as we build up to LGBT Awareness Week and the Summit.

• How are we connecting with international students? What can we do to make international students feel welcome at Spectrum?
• What outreach can we do to first-year students? What will help us connect with them better?
• What are tangible things that we can do to improve the climate for transgender students at Miami? How can we build spaces and change policy to recognize gender diversity?
• How can we encourage staff and faculty to feel that they have a stake in making campus safer and more inclusive? How can we do more education for staff and faculty? What can bridge the divide between faculty and students?
• What outreach works best for alumni?

We look forward to hearing your thoughts on these topics and any other priorities that you have!