LGBTQ+ students on campus have been hard at work for years securing funding and resources for Kennesaw State students, but the majority of those resources are on the Kennesaw campus.
Vera Brickell, sophomore mechatronics major and president of Kennesaw Pride Alliance, believes that while KSU has made progress on behalf of their queer students by creating Stonewall housing, giving KPA their first annual budget, creating gender-neutral bathrooms and allowing students to use their preferred name, there is still more to be done.
Stonewall housing is a gender inclusive housing community located in the Austin Residence Complex on the Kennesaw campus. Stonewall housing is extremely important for transgender and gender non-binary students because it allows them to exist safely by not being constantly misgendered in their own homes.
Unfortunately, there is no LGBTQ+ housing community on the Marietta campus, meaning that transgender students on the Marietta campus are left with extremely limited living choices and are often placed in rooms with the wrong gender, completely invalidating their gender identity.
Another resource that the Marietta campus lacks is a multitude of gender-neutral bathrooms in academic buildings. On the Kennesaw campus, gender-neutral bathrooms can be found in the five floors of the Science building, the ground floor of the Math and Statistics building, the second floor of the University College building, the second floor of the Wilson Annex building and four other non-academic buildings.
“The Marietta campus needs more gender-neutral bathrooms in academic buildings,” Brickell said. “They don’t think to do these things, but they may not have bad intentions.”
The gender-neutral bathrooms on the Marietta campus can be found in only one academic building, which is problematic because most students need access to bathrooms in the buildings where their classes actually take place as opposed to having to walk to a residential housing complex to use the bathroom.
The Marietta campus also lacks a gender-neutral locker room while the Kennesaw campus has one in the Recreation Center.
The LGBTQ+ resource center is an excellent resource for queer KSU faculty, and it can be found on the second floor of the student center on the Kennesaw campus. Students can find a multitude of pamphlets, books and people that can serve as resources for their academic careers and personal needs.
There is no LGBTQ+ resource center on the Marietta campus, so queer students on the Marietta campus who may need the same resources or seek community must go to the office of multicultural student affairs, the parent department of KSU’s LGBTQ+ services. The office is tasked with overseeing a multitude of student organizations, meaning less time is allocated specifically to queer students.
College Choice compiled a list of the 50 most LGBTQ+ friendly universities in the United States, and not a single university in the state of Georgia made the cut.
While KSU has a multitude of resources for queer students, it’s significantly lacking in comparison to other American universities. Perhaps this is best seen on the Marietta campus, where LGBTQ+ students receive fewer resources than their peers on the Kennesaw campus. Transgender students should not have less access to bathrooms because they are not a liberal arts major.
Students and faculty who are interested in learning more about LGBTQ+ issues at KSU should visit the LGBTQ+ Student Programs website.
