Kevin Jenkins

kevin@thespectrum.com

A new resource center at Dixie State University aims to provide gay and transsexual students with a sense of security and community amid the challenges of pursuing a higher education in a new school year.

The LGBTQ-plus center, an acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer-plus, expands on the supportive measures fostered by the university’s Gay-Straight Alliance club. The resource center establishes a part-time university staff position to coordinate student mentoring, resource materials and activities, and it has a fund-raising arm that is already offering scholarship assistance.

“We only have one (scholarship) right now that was made possible with a donation from the St. George Pride Committee. They gave us $2,000,” said Barrett Beck, an English teacher who is the resource center’s community specialist and only staff member at the moment.

The donation stems from money raised during a community-wide Pride event at Vernon Worthen Park in June.

“Otherwise we would have had $300,” Beck said. “Our St. George Pride Scholarship is open to LGBT DSU students. … We really want to be able to offer more because the LGBT population is really financially vulnerable, because often people will come out to their parents and then they lose their parental support. So they end up taking out of a lot of loans. They might have all sorts of disadvantages that straight students don’t have.”

Dean of Students Del Beatty reflected Wednesday on meeting a female student last year who reminded him that she had previously been a Dixie State student.

Beatty said he didn’t remember her, until she explained that while at Dixie she had decided to undergo the transgender process to change from being a man to a woman.

“She went back home to California and she’d now been through the process. So she came back now as female and she said, ‘I need your assistance because…’ and she gave me her student ID card, and I saw the picture of her when she was here from a few years ago as a male student with a male name,” Beatty said.

“And I said, ‘Oh yeah, now I remember you.’ So she said, ‘I … need your help to get a new student ID card and change my name on the records of the school,’” Beatty said. “Having an LGBTQ resource center (provides) a place where they can go where we have faculty and staff members who are trained to assist them in the challenges they face.”

To help raise additional funds, the resource center will hold a luncheon next month in conjunction with Dixie State’s DOCUTAH film festival. Beck said the directors of two LGBT films at the festival will appear for a meet-and-greet at the luncheon, and those who have tickets to the festival will then be shuttled to the Eccles Fine Arts Center afterward to see the movies – “Uncle Gloria” and “Upstairs Inferno.”

“Most large public universities do have some sort of LGBT resource center … so this is bringing Dixie State in sync with what’s going on elsewhere. So we’re really proud of it,” Beck said.

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Beatty said the resource center is a big step forward for the university.

“The timing was right. I think it was always part of our plan to have an LGBTQ center. … But we were able to do it this year, and we’re excited about it,” he said. “The faculty and staff are on board 100 percent in wanting to provide the resources and support necessary to help the students be successful. … We have a couple of transgender faculty members and they’ve been really supportive.”

The new resource center is located in the Browning building under the umbrella of DSU’s Multicultural and Inclusion Center formerly known as the Multicultural Diversity Center.

Beatty said promoting and sustaining “diversity” has become important to agencies and businesses everywhere, but most see diversity as relating only to ethnicity.

“I use the example sometimes that, a person who comes from a single-parent household in Philadelphia is really, really different than someone who grew up as one of 10 kids in Tabiona, Utah, in a big Mormon family. But yet, when you see them on campus, they might look the same,” he said.

A week before fall semester classes start there was no real traffic at Beck’s office, but she expects that to change once the school year gets under way. In the meantime, Beck has been organizing a resource library and tracking down all the LGBT-related books already in the university library’s possession.

“We’ve got a list of around 200 books, which was far more than I expected,” she said.

“(GSA club members) wanted to read books that are positive, because usually if you’re seeing LGBT movies … or are in a class where you’ve got LGBT history, it’s very focused on death or violent and depressing stuff,” she said. “We’re really focusing on stuff a lot of positive fiction so people can read stories that aren’t depressing and said. … There’s actually kind of an in-joke among the LGBT community where if you see a gay character, you’re like, ‘OK, are they going to die?’ And usually you’re right.”

The resource center has also organized four mentors from among the university’s faculty and staff to assist students who send in emails via the website.

“They all identify as LGBT in some way,” Beck said. “As supportive as (other university) 'allies' are, it’s important for people to have role models who are like them to look up to.”

And the resource center is organizing weekly support groups that will begin in September for student and faculty members.

“It’s going to be a really calm, understanding environment where people either talk about their experiences or difficulties or just get together with like-minded people,” she said. “The LGBT community here is not small, but it’s very scattered.”

Beck moved to St. George from Ohio in 2014. While the LGBT community thrived in Ohio, Beck said she still experienced bullying in high school and never could have imagined herself as happily married to another woman as she is now.

Ironically, even though she’d had reservations about accepting a job in the heart of a religiously conservative population, she was able to marry in Utah before it was legally possible in Ohio.

Beatty said the transgender student he met with also praised the security and acceptance she felt while living in St. George.

“I said, ‘I’m really surprised … that you would want to come back to Dixie.’ And she said, ‘Oh it doesn’t surprise me at all,’” Beatty said. “We had a long discussion about the perceived religious bias that exists here and it was really nice because she said, ‘I know that people don’t view it the same as I do, and that’s fine. … Maybe their personal beliefs do not support what I’m doing, but they’re still nice to me. I feel safer here.’”

Beatty noted that BackgroundChecks.org listed Dixie State as one of the 50 safest campuses in America earlier this year – a distinction that no other Utah school received. For the past few years, he has hosted Gay Alliance SafeZone training to foster inclusiveness on campus, and those allies who have completed the training display a silver dollar-sized sticker with a triangle and a rainbow emblem on it.

“It’s someone who says, you know what, I am trained in this and … this is a safe place, I’m an ally. You can come talk to me about your issues,” Beatty said. “It’s a very recognizable symbol to members of the LGBTQ community.”

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Beck said she will undergo the training Sept. 30 and hopes to share information she gleans on campus and in the community at large. Then in October, the resource center will be highlighted during the MIC’s monthly “diversity dialogues” sponsored by the multicultural center. The dialogues will include roundtables and faculty lectures, as well as a speaker who will talk about LGBT activism, Beck said.

The challenges of fostering inclusiveness even occur within the LGBT organization as it strives to keep up with the continually changing ways people identify their genders and gender preferences, as evidenced in the evolving acronym it uses.

“It’s always an issue of how many letters to put in. Back in the 90s it was just gay and lesbian so you just had ‘GL’ and you were covered,” Beck said.

At June’s Pride event, participants added other letters, such as "I" for intersexual, "A" for asexual and "U" for undecided. Along with the name change for the MIC, Beck said the Gay-Straight Alliance club intends to change its name this semester in a bid to be more inclusive.

“We’re just going to go by LGBTQ-plus (for the resource center),” Beck said.

Follow reporter Kevin Jenkins on Twitter, @SpectrumJenkins. Call him at 435-674-6253.

If You Go

What: LGBTQ-plus luncheon fundraiser

When: Sept. 10, noon

Where: Zion Room, Holland Centennial Commons at Dixie State University

Cost: $40; tickets available online at dsulgbtlunch.eventbrite.com

More info: lgbt.dixie.edu