A Safe Space

One of the things that I mention in my presentations is if you say you’re a safe space make sure you are.

Defining diversity: LGBTQ faculty often find themselves outside the bounds
The Daily Pennsylvanian
By Chloe Cheng
04/26/16

In recent years, recruitment of a diverse faculty has been a topic of much discussion within Penn’s administrative circles. But LGBTQ faculty members — an already marginalized group — may often be pushed to the wayside or forgotten under the umbrella of diversity. Once on campus, many then face institutional and personal challenges stemming from their identities.
[…]
Other than in this introduction, sexual orientation — and not to mention, gender identity, which isn’t included in the official action plan in any respect — is not explicitly referred to at any other point.
[…]
Out of the four undergraduate schools, only the School of Nursing and the Wharton School include both sexual orientation and gender identity under their definition of diversity. The School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering and Applied Science include only sexual orientation in their definitions.

Mathematics professor and College of Arts and Sciences Dean Dennis DeTurck said that SAS’s action plan may only include sexual orientation and not gender identity because he imagines that “those two things mean the same thing to a lot of people.”

So much for diversity training if they don’t even understand the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity. It seems like they are only providing lip service to diversity, the article mentions the fact that they don’t even ask about SO and GI on their diversity surveys.

While the University collects concrete data on race and gender, the fact that sexual orientation and gender identity is left out of the process has led some administrators to question how they can ensure that progress is being made.
[…]
Allen said that information on race and ethnicity, as well as gender, is routinely collected because the University is required to report such information to the federal government. Other categories, such as sexual orientation and gender identity, are not required, but without the relevant data collection, keeping track of the university’s progress in recruiting and retaining LGBTQ faculty becomes harder.

In the 2010-2011 survey they did ask about SO but not GI.

What is worse than having no policy at all is saying you LGBT friendly when you are not, it leads to LGBT people letting their guard down only to get slammed later on.

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This afternoon I am co-presenting at the HIV Educational Forum that is presented by the Bristol Mayor’s Task Force on HIV/AIDS