Wow, I haven't been on this site in forever... Sorry about that! Hoping I can still leech a little creativity from our members still! Let me warn you now that this is probably going to be a long post, so I bolded my quick questions, and the rest of the rambling is full of my ideas/thoughts. So, I'm applying to be the RA for my uni's new LGBTQA wing next year! I'm really excited since we've been fighting for it for years because of how much harassment there is in our residence halls. I want to try and make our pilot year as successful as possible so we have a good foundation to build on. Therefore, I'm looking for some quick little suggestions from people. I know I'm starting really, really early, but a) I'm pretty sure I'll end up being the RA since so few people are applying, and b) well, it's fun to plan! And even if I'm not an RA, I work in LGBTQA education and can recycle some ideas. To begin, I'm pretty sure that our plan is to not... well, super-gay-ify the wing, at least at first. We're purposely choosing a wing name that won't make it really obvious what it is so that students who aren't out to their parents can sort of slip through things better. The last thing I want is for a kid who's trying to stay as closeted as possible at the time bring their parent into a subtly-named hall that has rainbows and gay pride symbols everywhere. Which brings me to question one: decorating tips? Any ideas for decoration themes? Door tags (name tags that go on residents' doors; usually they're, say, in the shape of a fish for an underwater decoration)? I'd really like to bring in some education into this wing, which is why I was tempted to use pictures of famous activists (Harvey Milk, Sylvia Rivera, etc) and cut them out to use as door tags. And another question: hall programming? There's a lot of stuff we have to cover in our programming (like alcohol awareness, sustainability, etc), so I've been playing with a lot of them to give them a more LGBTQA-based focus. Here are some of the ideas I have now based on the strains of programming we're required to have. The ones in bold are the ones I need some advice on: 1. Sex-Ed: Bringing in our awesome queer sex ed educators (who cover sex for LGBTQ people and allies). Their presentations are seriously hysterical and awesome. 2. Alcohol Awareness: Mocktail Movie Night, where we watch a movie (something fun like Rocky Horror) and make mocktails, but I slip a candy into most of them to show that people need to watch what goes into their drinks and always keep them attended. This is practically an RA requirement here, and it's actually really fun. 3. Health/Fitness: Queer the Rec, where we set up workout times at the rec center. 4. Academics: Thinking of having a study skills/time management workshop with a presentation on how to stay involved in LGBTQA service in any major/career. This is always a HUGE question that comes up with first year students here since most of them think that if you're not a sociology or gender studies major, you can't work with social justice. 5. Diversity: I have a million and one ideas, naturally. I won't clog up this space with them since there's so many, but I'd love to hear suggestions. 6. Safety: Looking for some advice. Our uni's health and wellness surveys say our LGBTQ students are more likely to be sexually and physically abused, so I really want a good program to teach them something. 7. Sustainability: It's easy enough to find the run-of-the-mill sustainability programs that all RAs do, but I'm curious if people have ideas on how to fit the theme of the hall... or if I should just leave something de-queered. And my very last question... I'd really, really like to include programming to go into different identities in the LGBTQA spectrum, like pansexual, asexuality, intersex bodies, omnisexuality, genderqueer people, and so on. This is always a huge dream of mine since I also work with my school's main pride group, but I'm always scared that there won't be a huge interest since I feel like I'm the only person I know who falls into any of these identities (asexual). Would YOU be interested in learning about them? How would you want to learn? If anyone has any input on any of these topics, I'd love to hear it! I'm really eager to get started on everything.
