On Saturday, I visited the place I went to college, Gonzaga University, for somewhat a final time in advance of my move to Los Angeles this August. Whenever I'm in/around Spokane, I love to drop by the campus, visit the bookstore, walk around to see what has changed and what has stayed the same, and reminisce about the "good old days." I graduated about seven years ago, so there definitely has been a lot of change over the years. Yet it still feels so familiar, trapped in time, where it can be 2004 again...
When I dropped by the residence hall where I lived my first two years, though, I was caught by a very touching surprise--through the front window, you could see the window of the RD's room right inside the hall entrance. And on that window, somewhat obscured by the glass and the fact the hall was dark, was a placard that I instantly recognized--a Safe Space placard.
Now, when I lived in this hall (2000-2002), I was just barely coming out. My first year I was able to come out to my friends, roommate, even RA, but I was still fairly cautious during my years in the hall. In fact, I had even heard a rumor my second year that someone in the hall knew there was a gay guy living there, and if he ever found out, he'd beat him up. So while I wasn't terribly "closeted" as you might say, I also felt a need to be on my guard to make sure I stayed safe while I lived there. My roommate was phenomenal, and I was a member of the gay-straight alliance on campus. I had a support network, but I also knew the reality of what life is like for an openly gay person in the world.
Now fast-forward to 2005. I'm a year into my position as an AmeriCorps volunteer at Gonzaga building up a brand-new LGBT Resource Center we successfully proposed just before I graduated. I got an email from a newer Philosophy faculty member to find out if we had a program like a Safe Space program, and how she could participate. Honestly, we did not. We wanted one when I was a student, but we never thought we could sway faculty and staff to participate in a training put together by us students. So she and I met several times, and I utilized the awesome network within the Consortium of LGBTQ Higher Education Resource Professionals, and we crafted a Safe Space program. I found a very simple symbol to use for our placards (the sign you post after you complete the session), a rainbow squiggle, and passed it along to a graphic designer friend of mine to clean it up and make it look professional. We were able to run the Safe Space program the summer just before I took off for graduate school, facilitating it for much of our Student Life staff. My faculty instigator continues to stay in touch and keep me informed on how the program has developed. She reassures me it has grown by leaps and bounds, becoming extremely successful and popular on campus.
But to see my old residence hall, where I was struggling with my own identity, and to imagine what it may have been like for a college student like me to see a Safe Space placard IN MY LIVING SPACE, I started to get a little choked up inside. It was a fantastic reminder of the role we all play in empowering our students to identify a need, advocate for a cause, and/or make a difference in their campus. My work led me toward an interest in the study of higher education, and the self-efficacy I developed from being a student leader has pushed me to seek more for myself and my accomplishments in life. And to think how quickly that could change for a student who may feel unwelcome or unsafe in their own campus living environment. Above all, nothing can be more meaningful for someone to realize that they left a positive legacy, no matter how small. It reminds me of our constantly repeated adage, "Leave a place better than you found it."
While it was great to see the campus again before I took off for my doctorate, what will leave the greatest impression on me--and continue to push me to seek more, to DEMAND (to use my one word for 2011) more from myself--is seeing that small sign of where I made a difference in the world, and to realize that there's still so much more to come.
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