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Friday, February 1
Dear LGBT and Ally Community:
For the past ten years, the Tufts University LGBT Center has hosted Safe
Colleges, a regional conference for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and
ally students, faculty, and staff. Over those ten years, we have seen the
rise of high school GSAs, the striking down of sodomy laws, and the
beginning of legal same-sex marriage in the U.S. Safe Colleges addressed
these topics and many more, including rights for transgender people, issues
in queer communities of color, and violence within our communities. The
largest of such conferences in the region, Safe Colleges helped forge the
way for the current proliferation of LGBT conferences for college students
across the United States. Ten years ago, Safe Colleges was the only
conference of its kind in New England. We are happy to note that this is no
longer the case.
In part because of this remarkable proliferation, the LGBT Center has
decided to end Safe Colleges on last year’s high note, and to devote the
resources of the center to other exciting projects. Most notably, the center
is deeply involved in a school-wide Social Justice Leadership Initiative
which, following Tufts’ signature commitment to active citizenship and
public service, aims to infuse social justice education into student
leadership programs across the university. This initiative and others fit
well with the LGBT Center’s grounding in an intersectional approach to
identity and diversity, an approach that views sexual orientation and gender
as inextricable from issues of race, class, ability, and other social
markers.
While it is with some sadness that we end the era of Safe Colleges, we also
look forward to working passionately and innovatively on new projects and
challenges.
Sincerely,
Dona Yarbrough
Director, LGBT Center
Tufts University
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