Title:10 Years of Open Windows at the LGBTQ Resource Center

Georgetown’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) community reflects on having a hilltop home

Shiva Subbaraman still remembers with good humor the first time she walked into the Leavey Center space created for the newly established LGBTQ Resource Center in 2008.

Despite a location in the hub of campus student life, the space was dark and closed off. There was no picture window into the hallway. The architect—thoughtful, but overprotective— had assumed that people coming and going from the center wanted privacy.

A decade later, that window opens onto a thriving LGBTQ campus community. The center hosts student orientation activities, regular coffee hours and Queer Kitchen, a peer-mentorship program, a month-long LGBTQ history month in the fall called OUTober, Gatherings and Passages programming, and the Georgetown Summer Fellows Program in partnership with the Georgetown Scholarship Program.

Zackary Abu-Akeel (F’18) remembers feeling uneasy the first time a friend brought him to the center’s coffee hour in his sophomore year, his first year “out” at Georgetown.

“Crossing that threshold made my identity more visible. I felt vulnerable giving up control of it. Thankfully, I found many new friends, Shiva, and my entryway into the active LGBTQ campus community on the other side.”

Abu-Akeel subsequently worked with Subbaraman to research the Out for Change campaign, and helped co-host events between the center and Campus Ministry.

“I said, ‘No! I want a window!’” recalls Subbaraman, the first full-time director of the center, who has led it since its founding. She wanted the space to feel open, welcoming, and colorful.

“So we knocked out a window, and it has made all the difference.”

The Impact of Allies

The center found major allies early on in Paul (C’62) and Chan Tagliabue. In 2011, while Paul Tagliabue was chairman of the university’s board of directors, the couple donated $1 million dollars to create the Tagliabue Initiative for LGBTQ Life: Fostering Formation and Transformation. Their son, Drew, who is a gay man, helped inspire the Tagliabues to grow student services support for LGBTQ individuals as integral members of the Georgetown community.

“From my perspective the gift was about our own priorities. We wanted to make clear, given our family experience, that this was a priority for us within an academic institution,” says Paul Tagliabue.

Chan Tagliabue also hopes the gift will continue to help all students feel welcome on campus.

“If you leave out a whole segment of the student body, you’re denying the heart of your true values as a university,” she says.

The Tagliabue gift allows the center to invite nationally known speakers, sponsor symposia, fund faculty and graduate student research projects, support student conferences, and hold an annual retreat called Journeys. (See page 25 for more information.)

The center has also made its mark on the university’s signature events, sponsoring the annual Lavender Graduation—a special ceremony for LGBTQ students and allies that is part of Commencement festivities—as well as official events at Homecoming, John Carroll Weekend, and Reunion Weekend. “We are in leadership everywhere,” Subbaraman says. “There is no part of the university that we have not touched.”

Julia Reticker-Flynn (F’08) recalls that at her Lavender Graduation in 2008, around eight students participated and three “amazingly supportive staff and faculty.” Attending Lavender Graduation just two years later, she found more than 150 students participating, along with hundreds of audience members, faculty and staff, and President John J. DeGioia. “While I was at Georgetown, I couldn’t have imagined this many people publicly supporting the LGBTQ community,” she says.

Associate professor and English department chair Ricardo Ortiz, a member of the Out for Change campaign that students and faculty launched in 2007 to advocate for support of LGBTQ communities at Georgetown, says that these events send an enormous signal to the campus: this is who we are as an institution in totality. He sees changes large and small in campus culture, from the quality of classroom conversations, to how students self-identify and dress, to out-identified stickers on their laptops.

“It’s a qualitatively different experience than it used to be. There’s been a really profound cultural shift,” Ortiz says.

A Long Road and a Turning Point

That shift did not happen overnight.

Michael Bento (C’83), today a mentor for LGBTQ students and Georgetown Scholarship Program students, remembers Georgetown before LGBTQ student groups were recognized by the university.

“Coming out as an undergrad, first to myself and then more broadly, was terrifying and painful,” Bento says. “I put an enormous amount of psychic energy into hiding. We all did. I think a lot about what we could have done with that energy if we hadn’t squandered it on hiding.”

LGBTQ student groups did not have equal, official status. In 1980, the Gay Rights Coalition of Georgetown University Law Center filed suit against the university to seek that status. After nine years of legal action, including motions before the Supreme Court, Georgetown and the students settled, and LGBTQ groups achieved the right to officially organize. That legal win spurred a boom of student activism that eventually culminated in the opening of the LGBTQ Resource Center in 2008.

In 2001 and 2002, LGBTQ groups on campus expressed interest in stronger backing from the administration, recounts Todd Olson, vice president for student affairs “Even though there was a student group, there wasn’t a lot of visibility or support. It still wasn’t a very welcoming place for LGBTQ students on this campus,” Olson remembers.

In 2003, the university created a part-time LGBTQ resource coordinator-advisor and began considering the full-time support that students wanted. In fall 2007, an LGBTQ student was hospitalized after being attacked by a group of men outside the Healy Gates. A Georgetown student was arrested as a suspect in the assault. Activism proliferated across campus in response to the hate crime, and students and faculty organized the Out for Change campaign.

Only one year out of the closet, Reticker-Flynn was nervous to join campaign leadership on an issue so personal. However, she felt determined that Georgetown could be a place that not only provided a world-class education, but also resources and compassion for LGBTQ students.

“The day before the first major protest, a small group of us gathered at one of our houses and stayed up all night writing out the campaign demands. We were angry, tired, but inspired that this might be an opportunity to create lasting change at Georgetown,” Reticker-Flynn says. They hoped that 100 people would sign a petition in support of the demands; within 15 hours they had over 900 signatures, she recalls.

“We were shocked and overjoyed. I remember feeling so inspired that there really was a ton of support for LGBTQ students at Georgetown.”

When a second LGBTQ student was pushed and verbally assaulted with homophobic slurs, and after weeks of subsequent student pressure, DeGioia convened a town hall to listen to student demands. Olson describes that town hall as “the point at which everything changed.”

Ortiz remembers standing on stage near DeGioia, hearing him publicly commit to creating an LGBTQ center as part of Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit mission.

“What he was initiating in that moment, he was doing as president of the university and a parent, but also as a Catholic,” Ortiz says. “When we invite students to come into this community, we do it in a way that should guarantee that they can live out their full realities as human beings. That’s fertile ground for a different kind of interaction between Catholic, Jesuit values and LGBTQ life. I have watched that blossom in the last decade.”

‘Not Despite but because of Georgetown’s Jesuit and Catholic Heritage’

Georgetown stands out as the first Catholic and Jesuit university to form and endow a university-resourced LGBTQ center.

Rev. Philip Boroughs, S.J., former vice president for mission and ministry and now president of the College of Holy Cross, and then-board member the late Rev. Howard Gray, S.J., were instrumental in early discussions on the need for the center.

“This was not despite but because of Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit heritage,” says Rev. Mark Bosco, S.J., current vice president for mission and ministry. “If we take seriously educating the whole person, they argued, then part of that education includes both understanding the needs of Georgetown’s LGBTQ students and finding acceptable ways to care for them.”

Boroughs and Gray convened conversations on how to incorporate Jesuit teachings into the center’s work, and the duty of Georgetown as a Catholic institution of higher education to provide pastoral care.

In her eulogy at Gray’s memorial Mass in May, Subbaraman paid tribute to his foundational role. “Without his moral and spiritual imprimatur, the LBGTQ Resource Center could not have been imagined,” she told the audience. “Among his many gifts to us, his greatest for all those on the margins of faith communities, but especially for LGBTQ communities, was that he saw us. And in seeing us he returned us to our spiritual origins,” Subbaraman said.

“Georgetown’s advocacy is drawn from its mission and values that promote respect and human dignity for all our students. If we take respect, sensitivity, and compassion as part of our Catholic response to the world’s needs, then it means getting to know Georgetown’s LGBTQ community and their needs,” Bosco says. “At the same time, Georgetown’s Catholic heritage has been and always will be part of the pastoral and intellectual discussion of the university,” Bosco adds.

As Bosco adds, “It is not a zero-sum game to be both deeply Catholic and deeply sensitive to LGBTQ concerns.”

‘These are my People; This is my Community’

Students report feeling that deep sensitivity in their lives on campus. One of the 2018 Lavender Graduation speakers, Zach Frial (F’18), who identifies as queer and transfeminine, says the evolution of their gender identity can be marked by two events put on by the center. At their first Journeys retreat, before coming out as transgender, Frial was invited to reflect on their experiences.

“As I was up there, I realized that I wasn’t being entirely truthful,” Frial says, realizing a lot was still hidden. “I wasn’t open to anybody about my gender. I had basically tried to shut down that part of myself, and left it out of my reflection. Being able to share my real story at Lavender Graduation this year was a redeeming moment. This is my full actual truth now.”

Grace Smith (C’18) also spoke at this year’s Lavender Graduation.

“It was one of the first moments when I could look out in the room and say ‘Oh, these are my people; this is my community.’ It was absolutely a product of four years of having them support me and having me support them,” Smith says.

The center’s influence extends to prospective students as well. Allen Easterling (F’19) realized soon after accepting an admission offer to Georgetown University that he did not really know what life at a Catholic and Jesuit university would be like for a gay man. He googled LGBTQ student life and Georgetown’s mission and values. Right away, he found a welcoming Facebook group, information in the New Student Orientation packet, and the LGBTQ Resource Center. The community he saw provided a wave of relief, and three years later he gives a lot of credit to the center for his positive experience at Georgetown.

Center supporter John LeBedda (C’68) thinks the creation and growth of the center make Georgetown a more attractive destination for LGBTQ students.

“It demonstrates the Jesuit principle of cura personalis, care for the entire person, in action. I think that LGBTQ students are much more likely to apply for admission to Georgetown given its growing reputation as a safe and friendly place for the LGBTQ community,” LeBedda says.

Center Represents Change to LGBTQ Alumni

Alumnus Michael Bento is enormously proud of the center’s role in helping students find themselves.

“It’s a gift to everyone at Georgetown to prominently hold up a model of being fully yourself. I think for staff, faculty, and students, it’s a model of how to live authentically, whoever you are,” Bento asserts. “I can’t think of a more important time in life to have a model like that than during your college years.”

Mark Lance, professor of justice and peace, recalls that 15 years ago out and active LGBTQ students often came to him talking about transferring from Georgetown, but today “the change is just profound. I think the center is an enormous part of that.”

The center brought Lorri L. Jean (L’82), chief plaintiff of the 1980 lawsuit and now CEO of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, to campus and hosted her as part of the 25th anniversary of the lawsuit. She was also invited to speak at the Georgetown Law Center for a half-day symposia. Jean said that while she’s “in the process of forgiveness,” seeing the change at Georgetown is “very gratifying.”

LeBedda reopened his relationship with the university. “It was through the unprecedented and courageous action of President John J. DeGioia, Vice President for Student Affairs Todd A. Olson, other members of the administration, faculty, and the heroic student body members that this was possible.”

Reticker-Flynn adds, “When you see your identity celebrated by the university, you begin to feel like you too belong.”

For more information on the LGBTQ Resource Center, visit lgbtq.georgetown.edu. To read more about the history of LGBTQ activism at Georgetown, visit the blog “LGBTQ Histories at Georgetown” at lgbtq.georgetown.domains/history.

The Tagliabue Initiative

Surrounded by their children and grandchildren, Paul (C’62) and Chan Tagliabue were presented with a special award at the 2018 Lavender Graduation in gratitude for their ongoing support of the LGBTQ community at Georgetown—beginning with their transformational gift establishing the Tagliabue Initiative for LGBTQ Life: Fostering Formation and Transformation.

“When we made this gift 10 years ago, a number of members on the board of directors said this will be the most significant thing you’ll do in your lifetime at Georgetown. And they were right,” said Paul Tagliabue.

The initiative supports a wide array of activities, including:

• OUTober programming, including the annual Coming Out Day, in which students pass through a door in Red Square to “come out” as proud LGBTQ Hoyas and allies.

• Journeys: Understanding Self and Building Community, an annual LGBTQ Resource Center retreat at Georgetown’s Calcagnini Contemplative Center.

• The Tagliabue Research Award in support of gender and sexuality research, most recently awarded to second-year master’s student Mahdi Zaidan for his examination of LGBTQ identity in the Middle East. Theology professor Julia Watts Belser was the inaugural recipient for her studies on LGBTQ disability justice activism.

• Lavender Graduation, featuring keynote speakers: D.C. Councilmember David Catania (F’90, L’94), Kara Swisher (F’84), Congressman David Cicilline (L’86), Melissa L. Bradley (B’89), Daniel Porterfield, Ph.D. (C’83, Parent’19, ’20), Susan Davis (F’78), The Honorable Mark Dybul (C’85, M’92, H’08), Dinaw Mengestu (C’00), Rev. Michael A. Zampelli, S.J. (C’82), and The Honorable Pamela K. Chen (L’86).