A student council at Columbia University wants more space and resources – exclusively for Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer + (LGBTQ+) and minority students.
The vote on the resolution was unanimous, Campus Reform reports.
A copy of the resolution, obtained by the college news service, identifying segregated rooms for “more institutional support, staff, resources, funding, and space for LGBTQ+ students, students of color, and those who hold combinations of these identities.”
The council wasn’t finished there. Both spaces should be furnished with some additional creature comforts like a “mounted television,” “resources that could accommodate computers,” “bookshelves,” and other items.
The resolution bemoans the fact that “Columbia’s LGBTQ+ communities are relatively underserved compared to those our peers institutions.”
The stark fact for the council is that Columbia is “one of two Ivy League institutions without an official LGBTQ+ student center.”
The resolution also demands that staff be hired to serve the LGBTQ students, including a full-time director and some part-time graduate students.
The council envisions these new facilities inhabiting Columbia’s high-density Lerner Hall, that is apparently already bursting with safe spaces, according to The Columbia Daily Spectator.
All this planning was not initiated without carefully assessing student need. According to one safe space advocate, “There are many spaces on campus, especially those that are dominated by straight males, that leave me tense. An LGBTQ+ Center would offer me yet another space where I could feel like I am safe to simply exist and be me.”
Or as another student observed, “Columbia boasts about having a diverse student body, but the Columbia students who create this diversity are not properly cared for.”
The council examined the testimony of 13 students in total in what constituted its research for the resolution.
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