Representatives from Columbia and other Ivy League schools convened in Lerner Hall this weekend to plan autumn’s inaugural Queer Ivy League Conference, and to share their perspectives on how to address queer-related issues.
During the meeting, students discussed prominent queer issues on their respective campuses and began to think about ways in which the conference—and relationships between the schools—might be most successful in the long run.
“This meeting ... was meant to learn about what other schools have, and plan this future conference,” Sean Udell, co-founder and host of the conference, member of Columbia Queer Alliance, and CC ’11 said. “[To] institutionalize ourselves somewhat so that we’re not just working towards this conference but that this network becomes a strong bond.”
Udell added that, in addition to planning the future conference, the event helped to “network and discuss different resources that we have at our own schools that help queer students in terms of social programming and bias and providing a safe space in general.”
Among the issues discussed were representation for LGBTQ students and the presence of queer issues in academic and institutional settings in general.
“The issue of queer studies definitely came up, in terms of advocating for it to be a minor, a concentration, or even a major in the academic studies,” Udell said. “None of the schools except for Cornell currently have an institutionalized setting for queer studies.”
“Everyone was interested in having that or having more of that,” Baylee Feore, Penn ’10, added.
Feore said that they also discussed more technical differences between the colleges. For example, UPenn and Princeton have three full-time LGBTQ advisers, while Columbia has only one and both Harvard and Cornell none.
Udell did explain that “Harvard is an example of a school whose LGBTQ groups do not receive university funding,” like student groups at Columbia, but rather recieve money from Alumni.
Differences between schools that have many coalition groups, schools that have only one coalition group, and schools like Columbia that have many groups that are more disparate and serve specific purposes were also discussed.
Another topic that brought all representatives on the same page was gender-blind housing, which was, according to Udell, “one of the more salient issues that came up because it is something all schools currently have or [are] looking to advocate for.”
“All the schools seem to be in different stages of carrying that out but not necessarily everyone is interested in carrying that out,” Anna Steffens, co-president of Q and CC ’10, said.
According to Steffens, there were about 20 to 25 students present at the meeting, and each school was supposed to bring three students. “It was not gender balanced,” Steffens said, noting the gender disparity between the approximately 15 males and five girls who attended.
Overall, Udell said that the conference saw success in its aim to begin organizing future plans. “We’re going to create social and educational opportunities for queer students at all our respective schools on a broader scale,” he said. The conference allowed them, he noted, to figure out “what our schools have and how each of us can make our schools better by knowing what other schools have.”
Feore also said that it was very exciting to “get together with queer leaders from ... the other Ivies and ... see the diversity of opinions we all have.”
The representatives present at the conference all have to submit proposals for a similar conference at their respective schools by May 9, and the best proposal will be used as the scheme for further collaboration. The host school would then determine whether the next conference, scheduled to run for two days, will be held in October 2009 or February 2010. Whether the conference will be annual or not is dependent upon the success of the event.
“We all had very different visions but a very different strategy of accomplishing those missions,” Feore said. “Some people thought we should have a big policy statement at the end, some people thought it should be more of a social nature, and some people thought it should be more of an educational nature.”
Despite some disparate opinions, Steffens reflected that “it was definitely a very productive planning meeting.”
“I think it is definitely very important that we keep reaching out to other schools,” she said.
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