After a summer of renovations, the LGBTQ+ Culture Center celebrated its new space Thursday.
Members of the LGBTQ+ community, students, staff members and allies showed up to mingle and explore the culture center’s new spaces. The event began with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and opening remarks from Director Bruce Smail, members of the alumni board, center founder Doug Bauder and Vice Provost for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Rashad Nelms, among others.
“My favorite part of the night was probably the speech that [Smail] gave,” Nalini Krishnan, office services assistant for the center, said. “He has really been the one that has been at the head of this project, and it’s been in the works for many, many years. And I think finally seeing it culminate into what it has become was really emotional.”
Smail said that in 2022, IU designated the building space for the LGBTQ+ Culture Center after the student affairs department relocated its office space within the building. With the opportunity to transform office rooms into center space, Smail and his coworkers began looking at ways to make the building more student-friendly through facility improvements and interior design renovations. They created plans for interior designs that would replace the first floor office spaces in the building entrance with an open student cafe lounge.
Now, students can hang out in the new student lounge, study or read in the library, and utilize the multipurpose counseling room. On Mondays, Counseling and Psychological Services staff will be available and on Fridays Accessible Educational Services will offer support. The room will be also utilized for accessible HIV testing. The renovations also helped create a gender-affirming closet, a room where students can try on gender-affirming clothing and feel comfortable expressing themselves.
Since its founding in 1994, the LGBTQ+ Culture Center has grown both structurally and in significance. Smail said the center began as an office for gay, lesbian and bisexual students rather than encompassing all gender identities and sexual orientations. The center has since grown to be more inclusive on campus.
“It was a little small section in what is now the library and almost a quarter of the room space,” Smail said. “To see the center grow from there to us having the entire building is amazing. And for us to be able to do a whole renovation, have a repainting job, recarpeting, new furniture, it just really adds a new flavor, new feel to the center. And I'm happy that we were able to successfully make that happen.”
To fund the renovations, the LGBTQ+ Culture Center received a grant from the IU Queer Philanthropy Circle and reached out to outside donors for more support. In total, they were able to raise around $225,000 for their renovation procedure, Smail said.
“I just want to say thank you to the folks that supported us in making this possible,” Smail said. “[To] the Queer Philanthropy Circle, departments that supported us and all the donors that did matching funds and challenged other folks to donate. There was a real great community effort to make this happen. So we're extremely grateful for all the support.”
For the re-opening ceremony, the center was decorated with balloons, a variety of pride flags and historical posters and catered food from The Trojan Horse.
“I think that the night itself was an incredible success. I'm so thankful for the people that showed up to show their support for the center and then to also finally [see] some of the donors,” Krishnan said. “A lot of the students who have been here multiple years [got to] see the center before and after to see the product of all of our hard work and our joint efforts.”
Krishnan, who also serves as president of the Queer Student Union described the event as a "full-circle moment."
“I'm a senior now and I came to IU as someone who has grown up in Indiana and who never really had like a queer community where I grew up,” Krishnan said. "And the center was kind of like that first exposure for me, like, ‘oh, something like this can exist in Indiana.’ I think the renovation was really a testament to the strength, the closeness and the ties between the queer community here at IU.”
The project’s success also highlights how the queer community feels supported at IU, Krishnan said.
“I think that this renovation indicates that the LGBTQ+ Culture Center and many folks at IU are still committed to prioritizing and making sure that safety and the feeling that IU is a home for queer people is emphasized,” Krishnan said.
Allies and members of the LGBTQ+ community can engage with the center through their fall programming schedule and keep up with their announcements and events by signing up for their QNews e-mail newsletter.
