In response to a student task force report showing nearly 80 percent of LGBTQ students felt “some level of unwelcome” at Boston University, the school’s administration is creating a professionally staffed LGBTQIA+ student resource center as a first step to becoming more proactively inclusive.
Reports Boston.com:
In November 2022, a Boston University student-led report showed a vast majority of polled LGBTQIA+ students felt some level of unwelcomed at the university. And while some respondents praised individual classes, teachers, and student organizations, on the whole, the report’s responses painted a bleak picture of widespread queer invisibility and exclusion passed down from the administration to students.
According to the report, the school lacked funded LGBTQIA+ student-support services, a professionally staffed LGBTQIA+ student center, a dedicated LGBTQIA+ website, an LGBTQIA+ student advisory committee, and an accessible network of all-gender restrooms, policies several other schools in the country had implemented.
The report, authored by the LGBTQIA+ Boston University Student Task Force (LGBTQIA+ BUST), recommended 16 steps the university could take to improve queer visibility and equality on campus. These included hiring more LGBTQIA+ professors, creating additional all-gender bathrooms on campus, incorporating LGBTQIA+ curriculum into the university’s orientation, and chiefly, establishing an LGBTQIA+ Student Resource Center.
And in February, the school took their first steps to address the concerns raised in the report: announcing the creation of a professionally staffed resource center for LGBTQIA+ students.
Read the complete Boston.com story here.
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