Berry College GSA

Vital Stats

Jessica R

Mount Berry, GA

  • People Doing It20

The Problem

I am a student at a private Christian founded college that will not allow their Gay Straight Alliance (Listen) to obtain official status. The college has been blatantly ignoring this group's importance to the student body, by openly claiming to not have a GSA to prospective students and upcoming freshmen, and has still not allowed the GSA to fully advertise, to provide education lectures or to host events nor do they allow them to receive funding of any sort. We are unable to help students that are struggling with issues such as coming out to family and friends and dealing with homophobia because we are unable to get to them. They have nowhere to go because since we do not exist we can not advertise to them. Our college has had numerous problems in the past with hate and discrimination against LGBTQ students and the president and trusties of our college has made it clear to us that they are unwilling to help remedy the hostile atmosphere and instead have fully enforced through denial of receiving official group status, the acceptability at Berry college to discriminate against students of a different sexual orientation.

Plan of Action

I am hoping to be able to provide a support network this year for our students to freely discuss their feelings on GLBTQ issues without fear of censure or being ostracized by their fellow students, faculty and college president. Our students are at a severe disadvantage and therefore I wish to provide them the ability to spread awareness through fliers, events, educational speakers, and general outreach focusing on creating a positive outlook. So far this year in an attempt to improve our situation, i have been planning many awareness projects and events that our students could participate in as well as setting up group discussions on hard issues such as loosing family members due to coming out, financial loss for being homeless, and dealing with homophobic students and teachers. I am planning on providing a safe atmosphere for students with issues surrounding either their sexual orientation or the sexual orientation of their friends and families.
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Discrimination

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