The following is an essay by Nathan Alexander, a doctoral student in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, in recognition of Pride month. 

I came to the University of Illinois in January 2017 as a Ph.D. student in natural resources and environmental sciences (NRES) and have witnessed the campus grow and change during my time here. The experience of belonging to a minoritized group while working at a university often means there is additional advocacy work you are called to do outside of your stated job. 

However, it also means that you can find support and community outside of the typical academic framework. I think one of the most hopeful things for the University of Illinois and our town is that there is a supportive LGBTQ+ community. There are people working tirelessly (and sometimes tiredly) to enact change and improve conditions at the university and within the broader Champaign-Urbana area. 

During my time here, I have seen and been a part of these efforts to improve the LGBTQ+ climate both within the community and within the university. I have seen people work together through coalitions to create monumental change.

State, community, and campus supports

Living in Illinois these days makes me grateful—we are a trans-sanctuary state and LGBTQ+ rights were affirmed in the Illinois Human Rights Act (2013). State laws also protect other minoritized identities. For example, Illinois is a sanctuary state for immigrants and undocumented people, and we have sanctuary state protections for reproductive health. 

Our local community is further protected through city Human Rights Ordinances both within Champaign and within Urbana. Our public health office has a strong HIV prevention and treatment program, and our local Planned Parenthood provides Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), working to ensure resources are available to LGBTQ+ community members. Our community has a non-university-affiliated nonprofit, the UP Center of Champaign County, which provides both events, support groups, and youth-specific events and groups. 

On campus, we have the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center (GSRC), focused on providing support to students, faculty, and staff through all aspects of their time here, within the university and the community, including advocating for healthcare, chosen name policies, housing student groups, providing competency training, and advocating for systemic changes to promote inclusion.

We are fortunate to have research labs in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies in ACES that include LGBTQ+ research, with great work being produced by Ramona Oswald, Brian Ogolsky, and others. 

Two other campus entities, McKinley Health Center and the Counseling Center, offer all-important medical and mental health services and have made improvements in their LGBTQ+ support during my time at the U of I. McKinley can now prescribe and manage PreP, a pre-exposure HIV prevention medication, and can manage HRT (although they do not prescribe it). McKinley also allows expansive gender options during intake, showing growth towards more affirming care. The Counseling Center has also created an online option for scheduling an appointment, has a Gay, Bi, and Questioning men’s group, and colleges have counseling center staff associated with them. However, healthcare is a central concern for LGBTQ+ students, and continued dedication, improvement, and access to affirming care is needed. The GSRC or the UP Center can help identify local affirming doctors, mental health professionals, and healthcare organizations, and I recommend reaching out to them if you are looking for specific care or have negative healthcare experiences on campus or in the community.

Getting involved to improve the status of LGBTQ+ people on campus and beyond

Through campus and community LGBTQ+ organizations, I had many opportunities to join existing efforts and build strong friendships and support networks, creating a community that helps me succeed professionally within the university.

However, these structures and protections are not the type of work that, once completed, can be left to rest. The advances, rights, and protections we have gained as a community can be fragile and were only won in the first place due to strong community advocacy and relentless work. It requires continued efforts from our community to increase the protections and resources available to ensure members of our community have adequate resources. 

The LGBTQ+ community within Champaign-Urbana and the University of Illinois continues to work together to increase our protections and better meet the needs of LGBTQ+ people, including efforts on housing, healthcare, and social climate. Below are some examples of where I have seen improvements across campus and community life while acknowledging that there are still paths to be forged to increase access and care. I hope the main message is clear: If you are LGBTQ+, there is a community here that welcomes you and will work with you to continue to effect change.

I have had the privilege to work for several groups and organizations, both within the campus and within the larger CU community; I have served on two nonprofit boards, including the UP Center. While serving on the UP Center board, we were able to initiate Queer Prom for local high schools, secure homeless youth kits during a transition of the local Runaway and Homeless Youth voucher, host the annual Pridefest, and more.

I have also served on the GSRC Advisory Board for the past five years where we identified single-use restrooms across campus, which, through state law, are classified as all-gender restrooms; initiated an LGBTQ+ climate survey, worked to increase policy protections and support LGBTQ+ competency for organizations doing direct care, and more.

All of these endeavors required support from the community, individuals, and campus, and helped me develop a strong connection with other LGBTQ+ people doing work locally.

There are many opportunities for students to get involved on campus and beyond. They can join the Queer Campus Coalition, GSRC’s RSO, along with many other LGBTQ+ organizations across campus. In addition, the UP Center offers volunteer opportunities for involvement in the local community. 

Need for continued efforts and support

While I have described multiple supports for LGBTQ+ students, it’s important to highlight efforts that are still in progress. A deficit in LGBTQ+ inclusion in academia is demographic data collection. Major institutions often don’t collect data on LGBTQ+ identities, leaving data collection to individual researchers or organizations. At the U of I, there is a concerted effort to increase LGBTQ+ data collection of students to allow students to report their gender and sexual orientation, including managing data privacy and protection. Through proper data collection with ethical safeguards, the university and campus can be more adaptive and responsive to their needs. 

Departments are increasingly including LGBTQ+ data collection in climate surveys for students. However, if these efforts could be scaled to the campus level, we could adequately describe broad needs, numbers, and support. Data collection is tricky, however. As we recently witnessed in Florida, the state government requested data on the number of students receiving gender-affirming care. 

Besides data collection, accessibility to the GSRC is difficult. The GSRC is a great source of support and resources for students, but is located on the 3^rd floor of the Illini Union. Over the last several years, the staff of the GSRC has been skeletal, but we recently gained the leadership of Dr. Yolanda Williams-Goliday as GSRC director, Alex Torres as GSRC assistant director, and Mary Moon as the office manager. However, asking three people to meet the needs of all the LGBTQ+ students both in terms of policy and individual support is untenable for a university with ~52,000 enrolled students, without mentioning the added needs to support LGBTQ+ faculty and staff. There is a need for additional support and resources even with this office doing an incredible amount of work.

Although there are further needs for LGBTQ+ students on campus, McKinley, the Counseling Center, the GSRC, and many other campus units are working to improve support for LGBTQ+ students. And, in the work to improve the campus and the community, LGBTQ+ people can find each other and find their support networks.

Building a legacy on campus and in the literature

Within the department and college, I found colleagues working towards similar goals of LGBTQ+ affirmation and inclusion. These efforts resulted in professional activities, including presentations and three papers on LGBTQ+ inclusion across fieldwork, demographic data collection, and historic and contemporary systemic barriers faced by LGBTQ+ individuals within wildlife sciences. Although I have been a part of many efforts, none of these actions would have been achievable alone. Within CU and within the college, there are collaborators ready to engage and support initiatives, people to rely on, and a community, which further emphasizes the importance of being ourselves. Where LGBTQ+ identities may feel invisible or irrelevant in STEM, the act of creating and working to improve conditions emphasizes the importance and the acceptance of identities we bring into our work.

Illinois and ACES are places where LGBTQ+ people and voices can be amplified, including publicizing literature and experiences of LGBTQ+ researchers and students. My LGBTQ+ experience on campus includes working to improve systems and seeing tangible results, where I found community and saw efforts through my involvement. In my time, I have seen the university allow chosen names on diplomas, Spurlock Museum hosting drag exhibits, classes documenting our local LGBTQ+ history, improved departmental climates where students can be out, and many other efforts that are being led across campus. We are a dynamic campus and a dynamic college, where I believe our greatest strength is a commitment to continue to grow. We are in a state, a town, and a campus that is eager for our efforts, and, although it requires ongoing work, there are coalitions and a community doing the work. Experiencing campus and Champaign-Urbana as a member of the LGBTQ+ community has not always been easy, but I have never been alone. I have been proud to see the changes during my time here, knowing that these changes build on a legacy of others before me, and knowing the gains are just steps for those after my time to surpass.

Nathan Alexander
PhD Candidate
Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences
College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
Gender and Sexuality Resource Center (GSRC) Advisory Board
GSRC representative to the Continuum of Service Providers to the Homeless