Ceremony celebrates GLBT SSS renovations

Six strands of rainbow-colored ribbon hung in front of the staircase leading to Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Student Support Services.

GLBT office coordinator Doug Bauder, Provost and Executive Vice President Karen Hanson, Dean of Students Pete Goldsmith, Chancellor Emeritus Ken Gros Louis, IUPUI associate professor Peg Brand and GLBT office outreach coordinator Eric Gonzaba all stepped forward.

They had scissors in hands, ready to cut the ribbon in celebration of the newly renovated GLBT office at the Rainbow Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony on Friday.

Students and community members were invited to take a tour of the first-floor renovations, which took place between November 2010 and April 2011. IU paid for the renovations, but the all-new furnishings were purchased with alumni donations.

IU was one of only a dozen or so universities to have a GLBT support office when it opened in 1994, Bauder said. The office was created based on a recommendation from a commission formed to see how IU could be more GLBT-friendly.

Brand, widow of former president Myles Brand, said funding the office was a “no-brainer” for her husband and was one of his great successes.

While students criticized the then-president for switching funding to create the office, the community was generally supportive when it opened.

However, he received many negative letters from state legislators, with one calling support of a gay center “political suicide,” Gros Louis said.

“We were told it wasn’t just a few legislators in the statehouse, but people on both sides of the house were afraid if they endorsed this or spoke in favor of this, they would lose their seats,” said Bauder, who has been coordinating the office since it opened 17 years ago.

 “To the president, and the dean, and the chancellor’s credit, they saw this as a human issue.”

The GLBT office opened the same year Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the government policy banning openly gay, lesbian and bisexual people from serving in the military, took effect.

And the ribbon-cutting ceremony took place just four days before the policy’s repeal date, Sept. 20.

Offices like GLBT SSS, openly gay celebrities and the increasing amount of people with GLBT friends or family members in the past 20 years have helped to make the issue of gay rights personal, Bauder said.

“Poll the legislature in Indianapolis, and I’m sure they are much more conservative than the general population,” Bauder said.

 “Our state legislators — most of who I think are white men, probably in their 40s or 50s — just don’t get this issue the way people of (this) generation do.”

Now that the renovations are complete, Bauder and the GLBT office plan to work on outreach programs to support GLBT students in Indiana high schools.

Nine out of 10 GLBT teens still face harassment at school, according to a 2009 study by the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network.

“While we have a relatively gay-friendly campus, there are kids who come to this school having experienced a lot of harassment,” Bauder said. “There are still a lot of people who are intolerant and school policies (that) let that go.”