While many schools in Boston like to tout their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, an LGBTQIA+ student task force at Boston University took a closer look at their own university's efforts. They were shocked by what they found. Out of 46 peer schools, including Harvard, MIT, Boston College, Tufts and Northeastern, BU ranked last in LGBTQ+ support communities and academic resources. To address this, the task force recommended the creation of a new student resource center — and BU did just that. Christa Rose, BU student and co-founder of the task force, joined All Things Considered host Arun Rath to discuss the student-led effort to make Boston University more inclusive. This transcript has been lightly edited.
Arun Rath: So I understand the task force came together in the spring of last year, but take us back a little bit further and tell us more about what prompted the creation of the task force. I laid out those numbers at the beginning, but give us a sense of what that meant.
Christa Rose: As you mentioned, our task force formed last spring in response to the lack of institutional inquiry into the experiences, concerns and needs of LGBTQIA+ students. So in 2018, BU actually charged an LGBTQIA+ task force for faculty and staff, and they were explicitly told not to look at the experiences and needs of students. That task force led to the creation of the LGBTQIA+ Center for Faculty and Staff.
While a parallel task force was rumored to be created around the same time, four years went by, and none ever was. So using the 2018 final report of the LGBTQIA+ task force for faculty and staff as a model, we decided to form our own task force by students, for students. Unlike the 2018 task force, ours was not officially charged by the university.
In terms of timeline, from February to October of 2022, we launched an inquiry into the climate for LGBTQIA+ BU students and then compiled their findings and 16 recommendations to improve the climate into a 126-page report that was delivered to the president and provost in November of 2022.
Rath: In putting together that substantial report, how did you deploy to find this out? What were the research methods that you used to make sure you were hearing from everyone on campus?
Rose: We knew that the issues that LGBTQ+ students were facing were really multifaceted, so we wanted to make sure that we took a multifaceted approach to collect data on the climate. We really wanted to use a research-driven academic approach to advocacy, given that BU is a research-driven academic institution. We felt that they would be very responsive to that, and they would like to see the data. That approach included a climate survey for LGBTQ+ students. We also had an additional survey for these students to share their satisfaction — or lack thereof — with the availability and accessibility of all-gender bathrooms on campus.
We also held interviews with the LGBTQ+ center directors of peer and peer-plus institutions, including Tufts, Northeastern, Harvard, MIT and UMass Amherst. We conducted dozens of interviews with BU stakeholders who were either LGBTQ+ themselves or in a student support role — whether they were in health services or orientation, or the Center for Career Development — just to try to get a sense of what efforts were already in place to support LGBTQ+ students.
Lastly, we had two comparative landscape analyses. One looked at criteria related to institutional LGBTQ+ support, and then another looked specifically at the academic side of things, looking at women's gender and sexuality studies programs and departments across the peer and peer-plus institutions.
Rath: Tell us about the findings of the report and how that informed the kind of services you thought the centers should provide.
Rose: Our findings show that, on average, LGBTQ+ BU students do not believe that BU's administrators provide a welcoming environment for LGBTQ+ students and that, on average, LGBTQ+ BU students are dissatisfied with the level of LGBTQ+ resources currently available at BU. And even further, 38% of students do not know of any LGBTQ+ BU resources available to them.
Overall, our findings really show that the youth climate has taken a toll on LGBTQ+ students' mental and physical health, social life and academic performance. Our report makes several recommendations for what we hope the center would provide with those findings in mind.
Some of those recommendations include assistance connecting students to culturally competent support resources, guidance and financial assistance with student-led advocacy and other initiatives, an emergency fund, mentorship opportunities, educational workshops and a physical space for students to hang out and study with their LGBTQIA+ peers.
We really hope that, in addition to community building and having this physical space for community, policy advocacy and structural change are an integral part of the center's duties and would also emphasize throughout the report the necessity of an intersectional center that prioritizes the inclusivity and safety of our BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and people of color], trans and gender-nonconforming students.
Rath: Building on that, the report addresses two main themes: improving visibility, communication and community, as well as making sure the overall student experience is more equitable and inclusive. What kind of changes would need to take place?
Rose: In addition to this center, there really needs to be a university-wide climate shift. There need to be efforts across the entire university that are addressing the concerns and really aligning themselves with inclusive practices to better support LGBTQ+ students. We see the center as a critical first step in giving LGBTQ+ students the institutional support and visibility they deserve. But it really needs to be an effort that takes place across the university, split up based on department centers or offices. We really wanted to tailor our feedback to ensure that these specific centers and offices and departments knew exactly what they need to do to support LGBTQ+ students so that there was never a question of, "OK, I see what some of the issues are, but what can we do?"
Rath: What kind of reception have you had so far from the administration and the faculty?
Rose: In November of 2022, we met with the president, provost and interim dean of students. We were really nervous going into that meeting and unsure what to expect because up until then, we had historically been met with a lot of resistance, especially from the dean of students' office, regarding our advocacy efforts and bringing concerns that LGBTQ+ students have and offering recommendations on how to address those.
So going into this meeting, we really prepared for all kinds of scenarios, but we were actually super pleasantly surprised by how receptive and action-oriented they were from the start. President [Robert A.] Brown was basically like, "OK, we're going to create a center. This is a no-brainer for us. Where do you want it to be?"
There was a moment of just stunned silence from our task force because that was the question, maybe one of the very few questions that we were not anticipating for them to ask. We were, as I mentioned earlier, anticipating some resistance to our recommendations. But that's really not what we were met with at all, which was really, really surprising and great.
