00:00:01.690 - 00:00:09.910

Nice to meet you, too. Okay. So would you please just introduce yourself first?

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Yeah. Like full name and pronouns. Sure. Yeah.

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Hi, my name is Cedric Steenberg. My pronouns are he, him, his. I went to the University of Delaware from 2010 to 2014, and I majored in

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English Lit and Women and Gender Studies. Okay, Cedric. What made you choose your major? it's a question I haven't had to answer in

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a really long time um so yeah I actually started as a history major when I started at UD uh I was intending to go to law school and work on Capitol Hill um and I took

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like my first history class and I realized it was not for me um and ended up um I had my my like I don't remember what it's called but there's like that English writing class

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that everybody has to take your your first year I don't know if they still do that but I had an amazing professor who I think is still there uh Dr. Couture Dr. Christine

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Couture um yeah love love Cooch um and she was just amazing I just I ended up loving her and so I switched into English Lit. I ended up taking like five or

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six classes with her specifically, which I just, like I said, just loved her. And then, you know, a lot of English classes were cross-listed

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with women and gender studies. So I took one and fell in love with it too. And I just decided to clear both majors. And really for me, it was about reading

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literature from a queer perspective um and really trying to dig into those those themes um yeah i loved it okay that's awesome cedric um what do you do now since

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after college yeah so i'm a professional fundraiser um i have worked in uh non -profits and i currently work in higher education i'm at uh bates college which is

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a small liberal arts college in Maine. My title is director of donor relations, but I got started in Wilmington right after

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school. I actually got my first, I got my job offer while I was on my women's studies bar crawl my senior year. We, what I remember about that specifically

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is that we did t-shirts for the bar crawl and we had like an intersection and we put all the bar names on each corner. And we said, it was

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intersectionality. That was our, our thing. But yeah, in anyway, worked in nonprofits ever since I've been in hunger, education, financial literacy, and

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like I said, now higher ed. What organizations were you in when you were here at UD? Yeah. So I was in Haven, which is now

00:03:12.330 - 00:03:21.790

the Lavender Programming Board. I was in Haven all four years. My sophomore year, I was the director of programming. So I planned the drag shows.

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And then my junior year, I was president of Haven. And then my senior year, I decided not to be on the leadership team anymore. I also was kind of tangentially involved

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with V-Day and SAGE. I was a regular, I don't know if SAGE is still around. It was like the general feminist organization at the time um my best friend um was the president

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of v-day actually my mom did the vagina monologues two years in a row including the year after i graduated because she loved it so much um and then i also started a um a

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student group i was on campus called ud man it was a my senior thesis capstone project it was like um men working towards feminism i don't i'm sure it does not exist anymore

00:04:08.730 - 00:04:23.570

but i did start that wow that's awesome um you brought up the fact that you planned like drag shows when you were here at ud was it difficult at all like having to try

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to plan that like was there any backlash when it came to it at all during that time no no not at all i think like the most difficult process was like literally working with

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the drag queens themselves um they put some insane things in their contract writers um so we had to do a lot of telling like who did i work with uh pandora box i mean these

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were like early drag race queens way back in the day um yeah that they were probably the most difficult part of that i mean i i do remember that it felt like the administration

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was sensitive to us and to not wanting us to be too too much if you will um it definitely like they still provided financial support we had a dedicated staff member who

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was working with us so it felt like we had the support of the community and really no one was shitty about the drag shows i mean they were really well attended okay that's

00:05:27.630 - 00:05:38.600

awesome i'm glad to hear that um what was it like being the president for the haven organization during your time like what responsibilities did you necessarily have yeah um

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haven was great i mean it was it was a really nice environment it was it was interesting at the time it felt like if you were queer on campus you were either in haven or you

00:05:50.270 - 00:06:02.950

did um campus tours with admissions um and never the two groups shall meet basically it was I mean it was a great experience I got to work with a lot of interesting people

00:06:02.950 - 00:06:15.750

we got to do a lot of interesting things um I think what I was most proud of was um we added like two temporary positions to the board at the time one specifically focused on

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trans issues which we had not done previously as far as I know um and then the other one was focused on kind of like um health care needs so we did like a meeting about eating

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disorders in the community and stuff like that um but yeah i mean it was i think like whenever you get a group of 12 passionate queer people in a room like there can be like

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issues and there can be fights and stuff like that but overall i think we all got along well and i think we all knew that we were working for the common good and we

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were working to build this community and and i think it worked out well. That's good. I'm glad. Um, so what's your sexual orientation?

00:06:59.510 - 00:07:08.010

If you don't mind me asking? Yeah, I identify as a gay man. Okay. Um, so what, at what age did

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you realize like you were gay? Yeah. Um, so I have a kind of a weird like childhood story related to this. Um, So my dad is also gay. He came out when I was

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in third grade. So I would say that that's when I kind of first like, came to realize that this might be a thing for me as well. I don't know how old you're in third grade,

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like eight years old or something like that. um I had always been an effeminate little boy and I think no one was particularly surprised when I did end up coming out I came out

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when I was 13 um so yeah I mean it was I didn't really because I had a gay parent I didn't really face a lot of homophobia in the home um I definitely dealt with homophobia at

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school and like with people I knew and I think in a certain way my dad being gay and other people finding out that he was gay started started the bullying kind of getting

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intensified um and i think i had to deal with a lot of feelings of like of shame and being like you know is am i gay because my dad's gay too did he turn me gay blah blah blah uh

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which obviously not true but um yeah it was it's i have a strange experience that's not not like a lot of others. So I'm, I'm happy to say that I felt relatively free of shame

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about my sexuality as I was becoming an adult, but it certainly made things interesting. No, I'm sure. When you came to UD, did things get

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easier, like getting away from high school and middle school and all that? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think once you take like gym class out of the equation like

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it's a lot easier to like cope um yeah I mean it was I I had the advantage of having a gay parent so I was like very exposed to the queer community outside you know like my

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parents had gay friends I went to my first pride when I was like maybe 10 or 11 years old um so I felt pretty comfortable being a gay person but I hadn't really had the opportunity

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to build a community of people my own age at the time um I mean I think like at my high school I was one of like two out boys I ended up dating one of that like you know

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it's it was it was a small world and it was really nice when my world expanded um and suddenly a lot more people were were around me I'm happy to hear that um from the time you

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were in UD to now like what has changed in the world that you are most proud of and least proud of yeah um well i gay marriage became legal while i was in college um or

00:10:04.590 - 00:10:15.250

maybe like right afterwards it was legal in delaware when i was there and then it became legal i think the next year afterwards so like that was a huge fucking win um i my

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dad's had actually ended up getting married in delaware that year um they had gotten married in a religious ceremony and then they got married in delaware and then they got

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married again in pennsylvania when it became legal in pa um so i mean i think that was that was pretty incredible um i i think i think at the time we had a lot of hope

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about the future in general um it felt like everything was progressing in like the right direction and like maybe not at the pace that we wanted but like at a good pace um and i

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i think conversely these days i don't feel a lot of hope um and i feel a lot of um anxiety about our position and the position of our like our trans siblings for instance and

00:11:02.830 - 00:11:15.750

i i think that's what i guess what i'm least proud of is the way that like our identities have been weaponized against us um and that we have so many so few people in power

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really defending us at this point which just feels like such a strange like it just it feels unreal in a lot of ways how the world changed so quickly or how the media or like the

00:11:27.050 - 00:11:38.970

general landscape changed so quickly on us yeah i did notice on your google form you um were saying that you recalled feeling nothing but optimistic about what the future

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held for yourself and your queer friends um which is something you haven't been able to say often lately so i was going to ask you if you elaborate a little more on that

00:11:48.690 - 00:12:05.070

but you pretty much already did but yeah no the world sucks right now not gonna lie um so right now you do ud pride alum network right so what is necessarily your role in

00:12:05.970 - 00:12:16.350

sure um i think technically i'm the vice president i've been the vice president for like two and a half years i was not elected so um i don't know if that's going to continue

00:12:16.350 - 00:12:29.190

to be the case um i don't know i mean we're like a really burgeoning group we started in 2022 or 2023 something like that um and i i think we're just trying to like do what

00:12:29.190 - 00:12:39.650

we can to support current students um And we've done like a little bit of fundraising. I hope to do some more of that this year. And then just actually a few weeks ago, we

00:12:39.650 - 00:12:52.850

did a virtual panel at the I don't know what it's called. It's like the like the student center for blogging or quality or whatever. um so we had a handful of alums kind of

00:12:52.850 - 00:13:01.490

talking about what it's like to be queer in the workplace um and actually i felt like i was probably the worst person on the panel there was some really great people there with me

00:13:01.490 - 00:13:13.350

um we had this one this one woman older lesbian she graduated in like 1990 and it's i don't know these were just like really great incredible people who um it was really cool

00:13:13.350 - 00:13:24.090

to hear about what they went through and particularly contrasting it to what what i went through at ug because like i said i felt like we were in an era of of of acceptance and

00:13:24.090 - 00:13:33.590

and then i hear about what happened in the 90s what happened in the 80s like it's definitely was definitely not that um but yeah i mean i think we're we're still trying to kind

00:13:33.590 - 00:13:43.930

of figure out what it means to be good alums i mean i so i work in higher ed so that's a big impetus for like why i did this um because I wanted to like see how it worked on

00:13:43.930 - 00:13:56.630

the other side but I think you know I don't I don't honestly feel a strong connection to UD all the time but I do have some really good memories there so I'm

00:13:56.630 - 00:14:08.870

hoping that I can honor that and and help out help out the current students yeah that's awesome great I really I appreciate all the work that you guys do honestly

00:14:08.870 - 00:14:21.190

um was there like any significant event being here at UD could be about LGBTQ could be about your personal life um that has like impacted your life either could be for

00:14:21.190 - 00:14:37.630

the greater good or it wasn't the best honestly so yeah I mean lots of things I feel like there's so much that happens in college that impacts your kind of core identity

00:14:37.630 - 00:14:54.010

and really lasts with you for a long time some of which is like appropriate and some which is not um I I mean like to be very um mundane about the whole thing I mean like

00:14:54.010 - 00:15:03.230

I'm in my career because of the things that happened at UD like I did the senior class gift that was like my first official fundraising experience and i've been riding that on

00:15:03.230 - 00:15:13.670

my resume ever since um but i don't know i think like from a political context or from like a queer identity context there was like a couple fun demonstrations that we did

00:15:13.670 - 00:15:24.510

there was this woman i can't remember her full name her name was christine something she um this was back in you know 2011 2012 um she was running for senator in delaware she was

00:15:24.510 - 00:15:34.090

the republican nominee and she had this ad where she like said that she wasn't a witch that was like her whole thing because they had like uncovered maybe that she had like

00:15:34.090 - 00:15:43.030

been in a Wiccan group or some stupid shit like that way back in the day. But she was horrible. She was a homophobe. She was nasty. We hated her. So we did a big protest of

00:15:43.030 - 00:15:53.190

the green for her, which was really awesome. I don't know if the preacher outside of Kirkbride is still there, but there was a preacher outside of Kirkbride who

00:15:53.190 - 00:16:03.930

constantly yelled and harassed at everyone. So one day we organized a kiss in in front of him which was very satisfying um and i think has informed a lot about how i

00:16:03.930 - 00:16:14.630

feel about being queer in a political context i i think you know people are gonna hate us no matter what um unfortunately so sometimes the best solution is to be

00:16:14.630 - 00:16:28.560

as loud and proud as you possibly can be yeah kirk bride jesus still exists here unfortunately and sometimes we get those groups as well that you know come after women

00:16:28.560 - 00:16:45.170

and queers and all of them um would you say is much easier now for kids to come out of like being gay and bisexual trans and anywhere on the lgbtq uh i mean i think

00:16:45.170 - 00:16:54.210

it depends on where you are and who your parents are and i don't know i I mean, you would probably know better than I would. I don't know. I mean, like, I feel

00:16:54.210 - 00:17:04.410

fortunate that I live in New England and it's a very accepting place. We have a lot of protections in this, in Maine in particular. I mean, I don't

00:17:04.410 - 00:17:12.350

know if you keep up with the news, but there's been a whole battle in Maine because we protect trans students and we protect their access to sports.

00:17:13.410 - 00:17:22.970

So, but, you know, that's not the case everywhere. I've never lived in Texas or Georgia, but I would assume that it's a little more difficult to come out there.

00:17:23.870 - 00:17:33.710

But I mean, I certainly hope that it's, it's easier that now that we have, like shows like Heartstopper did not exist when, when I was coming of age,

00:17:33.710 - 00:17:45.490

you know, that wasn't, that wasn't media that was, was an option to me. Um, so I like to think that it's easier, um, given, given where the culture has moved.

00:17:46.650 - 00:17:54.130

Okay. Yeah, I would say so. That it has gotten easier, but I feel like we're falling back just a bit. Um,

00:17:54.430 - 00:18:05.730

would you go back in, in time to change anything at all from your time here at UD? And if so, what is it and why? Um, I would have worked harder

00:18:05.730 - 00:18:15.490

and gone to more of my classes. Um, I, I worked all the way through college. I was a barista for a lot of

00:18:15.490 - 00:18:24.670

it. I worked at the English language Institute for a lot of it too. And I had a lot of extracurriculars on my plates. Like I said, I was in Haven and I

00:18:24.670 - 00:18:35.430

did all sorts of stuff like that. Um, I, and I did do poorly academically by any means. And I graduated, I did a senior thesis, but I, I wish I had taken a little more seriously

00:18:35.430 - 00:18:44.970

and put a little more time and a little more thought into it not because i think it would like necessarily change my trajectory but because i think that you you only get so many

00:18:44.970 - 00:18:57.490

options to like write papers about how zombie movies are representative of patriarchy like that is a limited opportunity that you get and like that's so fucking cool like it's

00:18:57.490 - 00:19:08.750

so cool to be able to just spend four years thinking and discussing things and and thinking about complicated topics the world post -grad does not encourage you to do any of

00:19:08.750 - 00:19:21.690

that in fact it actively discourages you to do that so yeah i think i would have just tried harder maybe wrote more papers like a week before rather than a night before um yeah

00:19:22.890 - 00:19:37.330

yeah i'll keep that noted um it's kind of hard i'm a professional procrastinator me too i get it um was working for ud pride alum network always something you wanted to do

00:19:37.330 - 00:19:51.640

or did it just like happen to fall into your lap um it definitely fell into my lap um i mean the ud alumni office reached out to me because i was the president of haven

00:19:51.640 - 00:20:01.890

um so yeah i mean i definitely think it fell into my lap I would say that like I'm the kind of ambitious that if an opportunity presents itself I feel like I have to take

00:20:01.890 - 00:20:16.110

it and so it wasn't necessarily something that I had really been dying to do um but it seemed like a good opportunity to expand my network to do something good for the

00:20:16.110 - 00:20:25.150

community to reconnect with some some people who I haven't seen a while I don't live anywhere near Delaware anymore. So like, that's kind of like the only opportunity to really

00:20:25.150 - 00:20:39.730

connect with people that I used to know. Got you. Okay. So obviously, you grew up during time where same sex marriage wasn't legal yet, at all.

00:20:40.790 - 00:20:52.630

Would you say necessarily, i mean for you or for others that you heard stories from like what has been like the worst thing you've heard if you don't mind

00:20:52.630 - 00:21:05.130

sharing or the worst thing that's ever happened to you and like before same-sex marriage became legal like in high school or middle school or sure sure uh i mean like you

00:21:05.130 - 00:21:17.290

know kids are creative they say all sorts of fucked up shit um i i'm sorry am i allowed to curse is that a problem i have a potty i think okay great um you know i mean

00:21:17.290 - 00:21:29.310

like it's a lot of like people hanging out of car windows and yelling faggot at me like that's like that was that was like the predominant like most overt homophobia i

00:21:29.310 - 00:21:36.030

experienced but like i mean you know like i said gym class like you're in the locker room you're surrounded by a bunch of straight guys like that's just like an awkward

00:21:36.030 - 00:21:46.230

experience and like even if they're not actively like saying something to me or threatening me with violence like you can feel the tension in in those kinds of those kinds

00:21:46.230 - 00:21:57.790

of environments um beyond that i mean like you know going to the gay bar and afterwards you come out and someone yells at you like that's happened to me i think it's a

00:21:57.790 - 00:22:09.710

lot of like situation it's i don't know like i'm my body is not the same as it was when i was younger like i used to be a willowy little twink and now i'm like six

00:22:09.710 - 00:22:21.410

foot two and i'm a bear and like it's not people don't fuck with me in the way that they would have fucked with me back then um i guess is what i'm trying to say so as

00:22:21.410 - 00:22:31.110

far as like the worst thing that's been said to me it's just like oh hey faggot go die or some stupid shit like that obviously like not enough to like make a real

00:22:31.110 - 00:22:46.030

impression on me i like i can't remember it no i get that i get that we still deal with stuff like that all the time um so you said that so your dad became was

00:22:46.030 - 00:22:59.610

gay and then he got married to i assume now a man yeah yeah um are you still like in good relations with your mother if you don't mind me asking oh yeah I mean my mom is

00:22:59.610 - 00:23:11.790

probably my dad's biggest fan she loves him um they yeah I mean the divorce like wasn't great from what I remember there was a lot of fighting a lot of yelling but I think we all

00:23:11.790 - 00:23:23.570

realized that it was for the best um my dad was for lack of a better term like he was living a lie and like it made him miserable and when he was miserable that made everyone

00:23:23.570 - 00:23:34.850

else miserable um so yeah i mean i think the divorce was like a good thing and my mom was very supporting my mom's my mom's like as liberal as they come she loves gay people

00:23:34.850 - 00:23:48.610

she loves the democrats like she's pretty chill um so yeah they have they have a great relationship actually she probably sees my dad more often than i do wow okay i'm glad

00:23:48.610 - 00:24:02.250

to hear that um do you have any siblings i do i have an older sister she's nine years older than me and then i have a stepsister who is about a year older than me and

00:24:02.530 - 00:24:11.510

the relationships between them have been good no issues at all uh i don't really talk to my stepsister at all but it's not because we like hate each other or anything we

00:24:11.510 - 00:24:24.270

just like have nothing in common um my older sister we're i guess we I could say we're close um we don't like see each other very often because I live far away but we

00:24:24.270 - 00:24:36.770

talk and the relationship is very positive I mean she loves me she loves gay people I'm glad um is there like any other events that you went to outside of UD during your

00:24:36.770 - 00:24:47.650

time here that say like because I know they had Rehoboth Beach down south and all that stuff I know they always got a lot of stuff going on down there with lgbtq so is there

00:24:47.650 - 00:24:58.770

like any other events that you ever attended to that you know you had a lot of fun at yeah um i mean we definitely went to rehoboth a few times um we went to pride at rehoboth

00:24:58.770 - 00:25:14.390

which is like pretty dinky um um but we were really regular philadelphia people like a group of us from haven or lpb whatever um we would go up to philly probably two three

00:25:14.390 - 00:25:25.990

times a month um particularly at the time we would go on wednesdays to woody's because that's when they had college nights um and then that turned into fridays and eye candy

00:25:25.990 - 00:25:37.270

which is a bar that does not exist anymore it's now taboo um because they have college night on fridays so i guess it's not really an event per se more of like we there were

00:25:37.270 - 00:25:47.330

no gay bars in Delaware I mean I think there was Crimson Moon in Wilmington but that was not really the vibe we were going for um but we definitely tried to get into the

00:25:47.330 - 00:26:06.890

city and experience nightlife um which was nice I'm glad um what also brought you to UD um great question so I'm I was an out-of -state student um but I um sort of grew up

00:26:06.890 - 00:26:18.050

in Delaware so my parents had lived in Delaware um until they got divorced um and then we moved to Pennsylvania um but the reason I picked UD was because my

00:26:18.050 - 00:26:30.750

boyfriend at the time was living in Delaware and I didn't want to break up with him uh and then of course we broke up this summer before I went to UD um so yeah I mean

00:26:30.750 - 00:26:40.570

like don't pick schools based on your high school boyfriends is I guess my advice yeah no I wouldn't do that either good yeah smart

00:26:44.070 - 00:26:56.010

all right I'm gonna jump in the middle um it's so funny that you said that because my mom also followed her boyfriend somewhere and she I know that's not in the same section but

00:26:56.010 - 00:27:07.870

she also said that it was probably a really bad mistake and do you think it like do you think you almost like regretted coming to UD at first after you guys broke up so soon

00:27:07.870 - 00:27:20.190

into your first semester or like did that kind of impact almost your experience during the time uh yeah I was pissed off um no I was really upset about the whole thing it was I

00:27:20.190 - 00:27:30.970

mean like you know when you're 18 you make really poor choices um and that was one of mine and he I mean that particular guy had been a poor choice he was definitely older than

00:27:30.970 - 00:27:40.830

me I should not have my parents should not have let me done that um but yeah no I was I was mad about it I had gotten into like several other schools and I I felt kind of stuck

00:27:40.830 - 00:27:54.190

my freshman year I mean I did not have a good first semester at all um it was really rough um but that being said I quickly got over that because I found some amazing people

00:27:54.190 - 00:28:05.790

and I made some amazing friends and I had some amazing professors so it was a short-lived regret but I absolutely regretted it when it first happened and I have a couple questions

00:28:05.790 - 00:28:16.870

that I kind of wrote I didn't lose them so if I have to go back I apologize no worries do you ever think or like wonder if your father hadn't come out when you were so much

00:28:16.870 - 00:28:25.750

younger do you think you would have wouldn't have realized that you were gay until like a lot later in life or do you think you had like a pretty decent grasp on what your sexuality

00:28:25.750 - 00:28:35.670

may have been like on your own um I think I would have figured it out within like two or three years I mean like I said no one was surprised when I came out I mean I it was

00:28:35.670 - 00:28:46.890

the kind of thing where like older women who knew me than have come up to my mom and been like we always knew you know um and like I said I was an effeminate little boy I was

00:28:46.890 - 00:28:56.430

getting bullied for being gay before I really understood what being what being gay was um so yeah I definitely think I would have figured it out pretty soon if nothing else changed

00:28:56.430 - 00:29:08.790

about my family like like I said they're both my mom is super liberal my dad's always been super liberal like it would have all been fine and then um I don't I'm not sure if

00:29:08.790 - 00:29:18.070

you have kids or not but if you don't and you decide that you do have kids or when you do have kids um what advice and if they came to you at like a younger age saying that they

00:29:18.070 - 00:29:27.110

also think they may be gay or identify in the lgbtq community what advice do you think you would give them like would you be a little more like brutally honest about what the

00:29:27.110 - 00:29:38.470

world may be like or like how do you think you would handle the conversation yeah um i would probably start with something like you only live once you should choose to live your

00:29:38.470 - 00:29:49.750

life in a way that makes you happy um yeah i mean like we can have frank conversations about homophobia and what it's like but i think it really depends on like who that child

00:29:49.750 - 00:30:00.450

is and what their identity is because like those are different experiences my experience as a cis gay man is so different from you know a trans guy or a trans woman like those

00:30:00.450 - 00:30:10.090

are very different experiences that i think would require different levels of care. I feel fortunate that I'm fairly well educated about a lot of these topics. So I think I

00:30:10.090 - 00:30:18.510

could walk through that with a child. That being said, I don't have kids and I certainly don't intend to have kids, but I mean, I would be happy to have a conversation with someone

00:30:18.510 - 00:30:30.540

else's kid about what it means to be gay. Right. And then kind of circling a little bit back to UD, you said prior that you'd feel like you don't really have a strong connection

00:30:30.540 - 00:30:40.210

to UD anymore is there a reason why or is just like the length of time that you've been out of the school and how you're not in the area anymore uh yeah I'd say it's it's

00:30:40.210 - 00:30:50.330

like the latter I mean listen I loved my time there I had a great four years made some great connections but like once you graduate college kind of drops into the the rear view

00:30:50.330 - 00:31:03.590

pretty fast um and I like wasn't super involved I went to I went to my five-year reunion which was fun but like that I don't know I this is this is like you hit a you hit a

00:31:03.590 - 00:31:11.870

nerve because like this is a constant conversation i have to have with myself about my career and like working for i work like i work for a small liberal arts college a very like

00:31:11.870 - 00:31:24.070

fancy one that costs like 85 000 a year to go to so like i like i have to think about like it like what's the purpose of higher education like why is it important is what i'm

00:31:24.070 - 00:31:33.810

doing important and meaningful in the world and i feel the same way about like my experience with with my alma mater like did like is that is that those years really that

00:31:33.810 - 00:31:44.430

important like do i owe something to the school do i owe something to the people who go to that school now um so yeah i'd say like the disc it was it was time it was distance it

00:31:44.430 - 00:31:54.270

was not really being involved for a while um but like i said i did that panel a couple weeks ago and i think that was such a like meaningful and important experience that did

00:31:54.270 - 00:32:07.850

make me feel connected um back to the school in an important way right and then um during your time at the school did your organization like have the opportunity to kind of collab

00:32:07.850 - 00:32:20.110

with other ones on campus or were other organizations open to collabing with you guys yeah um I'd say our biggest partner was um the student programming board SCAPAB I don't

00:32:20.110 - 00:32:30.670

know if it's called that still um they like did all of the activities on campus so we worked really closely with them we actually went to i don't remember what i think it's

00:32:30.670 - 00:32:40.430

called naca which is like the national association of college activities so we went with them to like their big fair where they like meet b-list celebrities who will come to your

00:32:40.430 - 00:32:52.250

school if you pay them enough um i actually met raven simone at one of those which was a highlight for sure um and yeah so we definitely worked with them i think we kind of

00:32:52.250 - 00:33:06.550

intersected with some of the like um like race and ethnicity focus to organizations um like the black student union and things like that you know from time to time um but i'd

00:33:06.550 - 00:33:18.330

say like largely we felt more independent not isolated but like you know we were doing our own thing and i think everyone was just kind of doing their own thing right that makes

00:33:18.330 - 00:33:34.070

sense um i would like to jump in real quick but what steps would you like take to organize the events like what's the process like uh yeah um so I was really fortunate that I

00:33:34.070 - 00:33:44.230

had a lot of people who had done it before me so I had their resources to lean on and also it's like been 12 years so like I don't really remember everything um but I don't

00:33:44.230 - 00:33:53.530

know like for the drag shows for instance we would um um pick a drag race queen that we liked and we would reach out to their agent and would see if they were available and then

00:33:53.530 - 00:34:05.010

whatever money was left over we would like use to hire local drag queens who were very talented just less exciting for us um and we would book a room it was always in trabant

00:34:05.010 - 00:34:17.610

um in like the big open room whatever that's called um yeah i don't know we like we'd book talent we would we would do posters and flyers it was actually horrible because

00:34:17.610 - 00:34:32.190

we would always do like um passing out flyers like outside of trip on or perkins um which i hated it was like such a degrading experience to hand out flyers um yeah i don't

00:34:32.190 - 00:34:39.290

know and then we would show up and we would do the show and we'd where we'd pick up the drag queen from the airport and she would you know tell us inappropriate jokes that we

00:34:39.290 - 00:34:52.410

loved sorry does that answer the question i i feel like i i it's been a long time no yeah no that definitely answered the question in a sense um would you say like your experience

00:34:52.410 - 00:35:06.210

from student organizing like how has it shaped your way of thinking about higher ed fundraising now like education fundraising uh well okay um what i'm about

00:35:06.210 - 00:35:15.390

to say is like a little crass and a little crude but like when you're fundraising just like the formula that we look at when we're trying to get

00:35:15.390 - 00:35:27.530

people to give us money is um affinity and capacity so like how much you like something or how much you identify with something and how much money you have so like you have to

00:35:27.530 - 00:35:37.690

lean in on people's identities in order to like get money out of them um so i think that was part of what student organizing helped me understand is like this is a group of

00:35:37.690 - 00:35:48.570

people that are coalescing around a particular identity and like if we think about what we want to achieve um we have to learn how to manipulate and move them and and get them

00:35:48.570 - 00:35:59.130

to do things that we want them to do so like if that's showing up to a drag show and being willing to part with ten dollars to go or if it's me asking them for a five thousand

00:35:59.130 - 00:36:11.350

dollar donation um it's understanding those people who they are why they identify a certain way and then how we can use that to our advantage like i said kind of crossed but

00:36:13.060 - 00:36:26.710

yeah um also just a little touch base of like what we have learned within class we hear a lot about act up i'm sure are you aware of what that is the aids crisis you know what

00:36:26.710 - 00:36:41.650

they do for it um from what we've learned from act up has it have you guys like did one sorry um did you guys do anything around that like in haven during the time you were here

00:36:41.650 - 00:36:55.560

at ud or was there like anything major going on i know act up goes years back but was it taught like or talked about a lot during your time here um i don't know if we like

00:36:55.560 - 00:37:06.530

specifically touched on act up at haven i did learn about packed up in my women and gender studies classes um so i was you know aware um i think like i talked about that kissing

00:37:06.530 - 00:37:15.310

in front of kirkbride jesus i mean i think that's like kind of borrowing directly from a lot of act ups tactics particularly like the die-ins for instance uh there's like a i

00:37:15.310 - 00:37:26.750

think a neat parallel to those two things um i don't know i mean like so much about what we were doing in haven was focused on what was happening now because like that was

00:37:26.750 - 00:37:38.250

that was our context i would like looking back now i wish we had spent more time on history and talking about our ancestors for lack of a better term um but i the other

00:37:38.250 - 00:37:50.930

thing to keep in mind is that so many of our elders or my elders i guess died in in the crisis um so there was really a lack of people to look up to a lack of people to

00:37:50.930 - 00:38:17.550

talk about these things with um yeah oh i'm sorry to hear that about your elders um i got i'm trying to look at the list of questions real quick sorry um i mean is there

00:38:17.550 - 00:38:28.790

anything like else you want to like tell us that you think would be great for generations to come with like archival material because the what we're doing in like queer

00:38:28.790 - 00:38:41.630

studies our class is to basically you know take what we learn from you know older generations and then what we do in our generation and just keep passing on for

00:38:41.630 - 00:38:50.370

more generations to come so is there anything like you would want to add on so kids in the future and people in the future wouldn't you would want them to know

00:38:51.290 - 00:39:07.090

uh yeah i would say that like center solidarity and everything um you know if you even think about like the lgbtq plus community we are of many different identities that are

00:39:07.090 - 00:39:17.050

living under one umbrella and i think like right now there's like a lot of discourse about that and like if that's even appropriate and my answer is yes it absolutely is like

00:39:17.050 - 00:39:28.970

we only benefit as queer people from having more people in our camp so like if that's somebody who says i'm queer because i like to wear leather when i have sex they can be queer

00:39:28.970 - 00:39:39.950

i welcome them i want them in this space because like they're going to be my advocate and i will be their advocate in turn division is like always the worst thing that we

00:39:39.950 - 00:39:50.070

can do to ourself because when we divide ourselves we lose our power and we don't want to lose our power especially now when some when we're being attacked on so many fronts and

00:39:50.070 - 00:40:00.250

particularly you know so many cis gay men are turning their backs on our our trans siblings and here it's like that's that's like i mean it's that it's that poem that holocaust

00:40:00.250 - 00:40:11.690

poem like first they came for them blah blah blah like that's like that's the reality here so like i'd say it's solidarity first and always no yeah i agree with everything

00:40:11.690 - 00:40:28.580

you just said um it truly is a tough time right now so hopefully we can all get through it together um i mean try and see i mean i don't necessarily have too many questions

00:40:28.590 - 00:40:40.890

left um i mean my last question for you i guess when you were working with haven i know you guys said you didn't know much about act up or anything like that but did you guys like

00:40:40.890 - 00:40:53.370

ever host events around raising awareness for aids and hiv at all yeah we did um we definitely did testing events that was like a a very common thing i think like looking

00:40:53.370 - 00:41:03.730

back i wish we had just done more um particularly more around like de -stigmatizing testing even if it's not for hiv like for any sti i think there's so much i'm just remembering

00:41:03.730 - 00:41:14.030

back to when i was that age i i used to think that if i got chlamydia it was the end of the world which is like just not the case it's not the world um they give you a shot

00:41:14.030 - 00:41:24.310

and it goes away um so yes we did do testing and things like that i wish we had done more um I think healthcare is one of those things that doesn't come up enough or didn't come

00:41:24.310 - 00:41:37.450

up enough at the time. And I wish it had. Okay. All right. Well, I mean, that's all the questions I have for you. I don't know if Kayla or Marissa have any more, but I mean,

00:41:39.490 - 00:42:00.610

y'all got questions? All the alum how do you guys find alumni to get in contact with like is there do you have to do like a little bit of digging on like

00:42:00.610 - 00:42:11.190

what they like what they've shared about their personal life or how do you find people to reach out to uh there's a couple of ways um so the primary thing we did at the beginning

00:42:11.190 - 00:42:21.330

was we looked at like student records so if you had um if you had haven or lavender programming board on your like record like you would have floated up into a list and we

00:42:21.330 - 00:42:32.710

would have sent you an email um and then it's like self-identification like you you get a survey you say hey i'm lgbt and i want to be involved in those alumni relations

00:42:32.960 - 00:42:43.190

conversations um but i mean like it's definitely a challenge because it's it's something you have to self-identify for and we don't want to be in a position where we like out someone

00:42:43.190 - 00:42:52.270

by accident or anything like that so I do think it has to be a little sensitive um but I mean just to be clear like that is information that could be on your student record

00:42:52.270 - 00:43:07.810

just so you're aware and then um oh my goodness my question just disappeared out of my brain oh um you said that when you were a student like Kirk by Jesus was still up and active

00:43:07.810 - 00:43:18.490

and you guys host like the other student body had like kisses and stuff so what advice would you give to students now who are uncomfortable with more controversial speakers

00:43:18.490 - 00:43:27.230

coming to um the school or like people like kirk by jesus or the people who are spewing a lot of homophobia like what advice would you give to students who are dealing with that

00:43:27.230 - 00:43:38.030

and are uncomfortable with it uh so first thing is keep in mind that nobody is going to do anything about it the school is not going to do anything about it the cops aren't

00:43:38.030 - 00:43:47.770

going to do anything about it they're gonna let that guy say whatever fucking awful things he's gonna say um that being said you know like just because they're not gonna do

00:43:47.770 - 00:43:58.870

something about it doesn't mean that you can't do something about it but like massive caution never get anywhere near him definitely don't touch him and try not to interact with him

00:43:58.870 - 00:44:08.030

as much as he can um i mean a lot of what he's doing about what those like anti-abortion people are doing like it's all about getting you to react and getting you to react in

00:44:08.030 - 00:44:24.570

a way that they can then sue you um so like misbehave do a kissing be loud be proud but like be careful okay that was my last two um i do have a

00:44:24.570 - 00:44:36.270

question about the kissing how was that organized was that like just decided by the student body just to do it or was that only based off haven so it was it was like

00:44:36.270 - 00:44:46.050

predominantly haven people um and honestly i think we were just drunk one night and we decided that we were gonna do this and then we did it it was it was pretty informal we

00:44:46.050 - 00:45:02.170

probably had like 20 couples all together mostly same-sex couples um not all though um yeah it was it was a it was a drunken like napkin plan that's crazy i would have thought

00:45:02.170 - 00:45:09.240

about that honestly but um i mean i don't think we really have any more questions