From the co-presidents
Dr. Craig and Dr. Weiser’s terms as co-president of the Queer Coalition end in June, and we have both decided to not run for re-election. We offer here some reflections upon our time in leadership with the Queer Coalition in the first QC Newsletter. As the inaugural co-presidents of the group, we felt it was our role to set Queer Coalition up success as an affinity group. During our first few years, we have, along with our great executive board and membership, re-established a significant presence on ISU’s campus, ensuring that our voices were being heard and taken seriously. Through our monthly executive board meetings, our full-body membership meetings, and our development of a working constitution, QC has made its presence known to the ISU community as well as the community at large.
As co-presidents, we have ensured QC has been involved on and beyond campus through such experiences as tabling for PRIDE events, Drag Royalty, and other events sponsored by campus organizations and other national events. We have sponsored events like Transgender National Day of Visibility and Transgender Day of Remembrance by participating in marches and then hosting programs at the end of the marches.
My work with QC closely aligns with my personal, scholarly, and professional goals. In my years working with queer-identified students and being queer, I came to the realization that to make a difference in the lives of our students, staff, and faculty it was necessary for me to get involved on this campus. QC came around at the right time for me. I have enjoyed this work. I have represented QC on the Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council which makes recommendations to the university President. As a member of the council, I have been honored to represent the LGBTQIA+ community of students, staff, faculty, and administrators at ISU. Currently I have been devoting my time to serving as the Chair of the President’s Subcommittee on LGBTQIA+ Policies and Procedures. This committee was formally initiated at the request of former President, Terri Goss Kinzy and continues under the Interim President Andover Tarhule. The committee is charged with making recommendations to both the Chief Inclusion and Diversity Officer, Dr. Doris Houston, and to President Tarhule. Currently, we are preparing our first report to be delivered to the President and the President’s Cabinet in early May. At the meeting, we will make early comments about our ongoing work and then put this into a formal report for the President and President’s Cabinet.
I recall my campus interview back in 2018 asking if there were was an affinity group for queer faculty, to which the person I asked said that they weren’t certain. I thought to myself then that if I were to come to ISU I would want to be part of starting one. While there was an affinity group (two in fact!) they weren’t as active as they had been in the past. When I first reached out to one of them (LGBT/Queer Studies and Services Institute) April Anderson-Zorn and Eric Willey (co-chairs of the institute) reached back out and offered to host a coffee gathering with existing membership so I could meet them. Little did I know that at that time, it would plant the seeds for an event that QC hosted this past fall for new queer members of our community which hosted over 50 people at Coffee House!
After the decision was made to close the predecessor organizations (LGBT/Queer Studies and Services Institute and Triangle Association), a working group of myself, Liv Stone, Dave Bentlin, and Barb Dalinger hosted an information meeting at the Bloomington-Normal Marriott in uptown Normal in February of 2020. We had about 70 people attend, and for many of us, it was likely the last time we were in a large group of other queer people for quite some time! COVID-19 threw a wrench in the works, but in Fall of 2021 we began to put on some smaller programs – often either virtually or outside, to begin to build this organization and foster community and queer kinship.
This work has been some of the most rewarding that I have done in my life as an organizer. It is hard to take a step back, but I keep recalling the words of Lin-Manuel Miranda (as sung by Chris Jackson playing George Washington) “it’s time to say good-bye,” and hope that the work that I have put into QC along with my good friend Byron and the rest of the executive board has set the Queer Coalition to continue to build upon the foundation we have crafted so they can improve upon our collective work.