The new K.C. Potter Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Center officially opens today. The center is certainly greeted with a great deal of excitement and praise from the LGBTQI community and its allies, but how does the Vanderbilt community as a whole benefit?
The K.C. Potter Center is funded by the office of the Dean of Students. That office also runs and funds various other student-focused organizations, including the office of Religious Life, the Office of Active Citizenship and Service and Sarratt Art Studios. These groups aim to benefit and serve the overall undergraduate community by providing programming and office space.
Under this office, the K.C. Potter Center, led by director Nora Spencer, was able to secure the Euclid Cottage next the Margaret Cuninggim Women’s Center near Alumni Lawn. This facility will serve as a meeting and gathering place for members and supporters of the gay community. Lambda, a student organization, will also find a home in the center.
As the Hustler reported in August, one of the goals of the center is to “solidify and unite” the LGBTQI community by offering a safe environment for students. The center, despite its best intentions, may be undoing this larger goal.
By sequestering the community in an identifiable space, Vanderbilt has taken measures to ensure that the community’s members are even more separated and less integrated into the overall Vanderbilt community. The K.C. Potter Center may be a way of uniting the LGBTQI community, but how does it unite that community with Vanderbilt?
In the most cynical of interpretations, the creation of the center seems to reflect an effort by Vanderbilt to deflect criticism that it does not foster an open environment for members of the gay community. This sort of special treatment for identity groups is done in the name of tolerance and acceptance, but instead it creates small echo chambers and fails to integrate.
Instead, perhaps the university could have invested in creating a center for all students — gay, straight, black, white, freshman, upperclassman, male, female, Peabody, Engineer, Blair, Arts and Science — to come together for meals, studying, meetings and interaction with each other. They could call it the Student Center, and it would be driven by the largest and most important identity group — students.
Please respond.
So, according to your logic, other minority-based resource centers, such as Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center, Margaret Cuninggim Women's Center and Ben Schulman Center for Jewish Life, are "ensuring that the community’s members are even more separated and less integrated into the overall Vanderbilt community". I know that is not what you said, but this seems to be your line of thinking- that "sequestering [a] community in an identifiable space" somehow undermines integration and acceptance of different minority groups. Please explain your logic in arriving this conclusion.
"The K.C. Potter Center may be a way of uniting the LGBTQI community, but how does it unite that community with Vanderbilt?"
It seems like you are the one dividing the community into different identity groups. You are suggesting that LGBTQI community is somehow separated from the larger Vanderbilt community.
No. The LGBTQI community IS the Vanderbilt community. When the LGBTQI community is united, Vanderbilt becomes more united. That resource center is our resource center. It is for students for all backgrounds, for all color, and for all orientations. It is for all members of the University to come together and celebrate a culture of tolerance and equality.