Barry Magee, assistant director of residence life, has introduced Spectrum to IU. Spectrum is a proposed thematic community specifically designed to house those who identify as LGBTQ.
Magee said he hopes to create an environment where those who identify with the LGBTQ community, as well as allies, can come together and have comfortable conversations. He said Spectrum will ideally be a community where these students will learn while living within the community.
He said he hopes Spectrum will create an environment in which students leave IU more knowledgeable about themselves and those who surround them daily.
Before proposing this idea to the university, Magee asked the coordinator of IU GLBT Student Support Services, Doug Bauder, to write a letter of support for Spectrum as a floor fellow.
Expanding their intentions, Magee and Bauder said they hope this community will create a safer atmosphere on campus for the people in this community by bringing them together. Bauder, while also serving on the GLBT Anti-Harassment Team, said he still has students who experience harassment for their identities.
“I feel that people of a minority value and need, at this point in our development as a culture, some space that is uniquely theirs,” Bauder said. “When it comes to feeling comfortable and safe in your own room and your own home, I think it is important for us to be able to provide that.”
Magee has already presented the idea to the ?Academic Information Services Advisory Committee, and he said there seemed to be unanimous support from the committee. He said they are looking to present the proposal to the executive director of Residential Programs and Services next.
If Spectrum is given the green light entirely, Magee said he hopes to create a committee of advisers that includes Bauder and himself. This committee will decide the housing arrangements and the assignment of resident assistants within the thematic community.
It is proposed that Spectrum will be a thematic community within Teter Quad because there are individual, locking bathrooms available. Because this community includes those who are on a gender, identity and sexuality spectrum, it would be difficult to divide the community into single-gender roommate arrangements.
Bauder said there will be an effort to room students of similar identities together.
The proposal is that Spectrum will be up and running by the 2015 fall semester. Once the community is officially approved, the promotion of Spectrum will begin. Magee said he hopes the approval will happen in time that the option to live in this community will appear on student housing applications for the upcoming year.
Magee and Bauder both said they are optimistic about the success of this community, and they hope to see it grow in a positive way. They also said that only time and the efforts of students will determine how Spectrum develops moving forward.
“Ultimately we are hoping that this thematic community will transition into being a living-learning center, and that it will be in collaboration with our gender studies department,” Magee said.
