>> I see it. And what I see is the responsibilities of
it is really creating this network of
visibility for the campus community,
and that's I focus strongly, you know,
on programming is where I put a lot of
it to create this cross campus visibility.
Because I feel it's the first step is
to really put the office out there and
integrate the services that we have into existing areas.
Similar with working with the archives and
trying not to make it where it's
just the GLBTIQ center
doing everything that's really the campus responsibility,
and my office helps facilitate that.
It's hard to have a GLBTIQ resource center space
in a changing, environment.
Acceptability of same sex marriage or marriage quality,
however you want to label it, isn't an all time high.
People are coming out all the time. It's not
always such a big deal.
I mean, there's always going to be
those sad stories and unfortunate circumstances.
But overall, I've got parents calling me to,
what do you have for my son? Interviewing me.
So it's a very different dynamic, I think,
than a lot of resource centers had to face when
they first came about in the 90s in early 2000s.
And so I really tried to focus on this idea of
understanding culture and awareness within the community.
Students who are coming in and don't have
a really strong foundation of knowing where we came from.
They don't know what stonewall is.
Or I asked them like,
what is National coming out day?
It's a day that you come out.
I'm like dude, what is it about, though?
And students don't even know that there was
a march on Washington for lesbian and gay rights.
And I think that's an important step.
And especially as people start talking about,
okay, as marriage quality becomes more prominent,
we gain more rights, the LGBT community disappear.
Does it become no different than,
I guess, the straight community?
And I think that's where the onus is,
is to really educate young people and
myself included of where do we come from?
How do we get to where we are?
And I think that's how I'm choosing to approach it.
I had my others, I would see sexual orientation and
gender identity added
into nondiscrimination policies nationally.
I think that would help with
a lot of the ambiguity that I even touched
about knowing what rights my wife and I could even get.
Because it's state by state.
I mean, if you look at Kennesaw,
we added sexual orientation I think in '95.
But as soon as you step off case your property,
I don't have any rights anymore.
I don't have any protections.
I think that creates a lot of
fear and uncertainty and keeps people from
being out and asserting themselves because you
don't know what rights you have where you have them.
And so I would see that as being a number 1 priority.
Locally, I don't see much
changing until something happens nationally.
I think really that nondiscrimination policy and
marriage quality being done
nationally is really how change will happen.