LGBTQ Resource Center celebrates 15 years

The center began in October 1995 and celebrated Coming Out Day on Monday.

By Jimmy Hibsch

Published Oct. 12, 2010

When Nikole Potulsky accepted the position as one of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Resource Center’s first coordinators 15 years ago, she said she knew change was on the horizon for MU’s LGBTQ community.

“When I started hanging out at the resource center it was a library, open by appointment only,” she said. “At the time, as students were coming out, they could go to the Triangle Coalition, the Women’s Center or bars -- those were your options. The resource center was available, but it wasn’t really staffed.”

In October 1995, a small group of graduate students and Women’s Center Director Laura Hacquard initiated the center. An undergraduate at the time, Potulsky and Everett Diedle, a then-graduate student, accepted co-coordinator positions at the center shortly after its inception. Potulsky said she saw the progression of the center firsthand.

“Through our presence there, keeping the doors open and doing all kinds of programming and community organizing, people started utilizing the center more,” Potulsky said. “There became more of a visible community. It was really necessary to have a visible, accessible person available for those students in crisis, as well as students who were looking for a place to plug in to the community and just get involved in general, and of course, find someone to date who they didn’t meet at a bar.”

Potulsky said when she left the center in 2000, she was happy to see it had blossomed into achieving its purpose.

“It really did become the epicenter of the campus queer community,” she said.

Over the center’s lifetime, its goals have remained almost the same. Potulsky said she remembered the center’s main objectives were to provide individual support and public education. Current LGBTQ Resource Center Coordinator Ryan Black said the center’s goal today is the same as it always has been.

“We want to try and find a way to create a safe and more inclusive environment at MU for students within the LGBTQ community, and straight allies as well,” Black said. “We just want to make sure this is a welcoming place. That’s a huge and overwhelming goal, but it’s not impossible.”

But that’s a long-term goal, Black said. In an effort to ensure the center is used to its full potential, Black said a prominent immediate objective is to increase visibility at MU.

“Most people don’t realize there’s a center on campus or even a student group or population on campus, which then translates into not having any idea what the issues are for those students,” Black said.

The center, which had previously been in Brady Commons and was exclusively an LGBTQ center, merged with several of MU’s other social justice organizations and moved into the Center for Social Justice in November 2008. Sometime before second semester, the center will move to the MU Student Center.

Black said he is excited to move to the new space because it will no longer be shared with any other social justice umbrella organizations. He said he hopes this enhanced privacy will encourage more students to utilize the center’s services. He said the center lost a segment of its community when it moved to the shared space because some members were not comfortable sharing their identity.

“Those people no longer come to the center,” he said. “They no longer hang out at our events and they are no longer a part of the social justice community on campus, at least within the centers. I am so excited to see how that is going to change when we get to the new office.”

People involved in the community gathered Monday to celebrate Coming Out Day in the center. Valerie Pollock, Safe Space coordinator and LGBTQ Resource Center staff member, was one of those people.

“I found a community here, a family,” she said. “I was involved with so many groups and organizations before I found the resource center. I’ve always been a really strong advocate and ally for the LGBTQ community, and being able to be involved in a center that focuses on that is amazing. We all support each other here. It’s been great for defining my identity as an ally and what that means to me.”

Pollock said the center is especially important in light of situations such as the recent suicides in the LGBTQ community, such as the case at Rutgers University after a student who was gay committed suicide after being publicly embarrassed.

“I think that centers like this and resources like this are important so people know they have a place to go and people who might not have gone through exactly what they’ve gone through, but can still talk to them,” she said. “What I like about centers like this on campus is that whenever there is a situation that happens, we find a way to come together and have a dialogue about it. As a resource center, we give voice to those kinds of situations that people don’t, whether they’re afraid to speak against it or not.”

Looking back on its 15 years at MU, Potulsky said she is glad to have been a part of the center’s growth into what Pollock described it as today.

“I felt proud to have been a leader and proud to have been a member of the center,” she said. “I have fond memories of all of my work, my friends and my community. I often look at the center’s website just to see what they’re up to. I’m proud that I was there at a time when the center needed time and energy and I had time and energy to give.”