On The Edge News

By Annika Lundgren 

LGBTQ+ students at Edgewood College say fellow students and the administration need to improve their efforts to make the campus genuinely inclusive.  

On April 2, Sadie Cordova, a senior at Edgewood College, organized a panel of LGBTQ+ students who spoke about their experiences on campus.  

Cordova said that she wanted “to create a space where queer folk at Edgewood felt like they could share their thoughts and experiences, but also create a space for other students to be educated about these experiences, and on a larger scale, to be able to create dialogue around solutions.” 

Panelists were Rae Howe (she/her/hers), Bonni Briggs (she/her/hers), Amir Franklin (they/them/theirs), Estiven Zhen Mulian (they/them/theirs), Holly Schaal (they/them /theirs), and Nikki Satterlund (she/her/hers). 

According to the panelists, there are a multitude of identities that are neglected not only by the students on campus, but administration, as well. 

Satterlund said that Edgewood College “is a school that kind of puts on a front like it should be better than other places … but actually, we’re not better, we’re just kind of average, and there are definitely ways that we are below average, too.” 

The panelists said they are frustrated that there is no space on campus dedicated to LGBTQ+ students. Although there is the Office of Student Inclusion and Involvement, the panelists said that they do not always feel comfortable entering that space. 

They agreed that the lack of this space on campus makes it difficult for LGBTQ+ students to feel like they have a safe place to go and meet people of similar identities.  

“I feel like the humanities are the safe space at Edgewood right now for queers,” Schaal said. 

For example, a few of the panelists said they feel safe to express themselves in Women’s and Gender Studies classes, whereas in other classes, they do not feel comfortable sharing their pronouns or identities.  

Panelists said they wanted Edgewood to: 

• hire someone temporarily in a full-time position who can advocate for the LGBTQ+ community on campus 

•  make a Women’s and Gender Studies class mandatory as a general education requirement, and  
• Have more accessible gender-neutral bathrooms on campus. 

Having a faculty member designated to LGBTQ+ advocacy would lessen the burden students feel is placed on them to revive SAFE, the LGBTQ+ student organization, according to Cordova. 

The lack of awareness of the LGBTQ+ community on campus is not only by the administration, but it is also the student body’s responsibility to become more active in LGBTQ+ support and awareness, the panelists said. 

They said they believe that Edgewood students need to start conversations and actions on campus so that diversity and inclusion can be constantly improving, not just from an administrative standpoint. 

 “I think some of this is not always just administration,” Satterlund said. “. . . we as students need to step up and do things, too, and come up with these ideas.”