The Queer & Trans Resource Center and other organizations gathered Tuesday at Malcolm X Plaza to promote accessible support for queer and transgender students.
QTRC is an Associated Students program that hosts events, provides assistance and gathers community engagement for queer and trans students. The program is available to all students but dedicated to uplifting and delivering services to SF State’s LGBTQ community.
The first annual resource fair featured a range of organizations from LYRIC, a center for LGBTQQ+ youth, to the San Francisco Public Library’s James C. Hormel LGBTQIA+ Center and SF State’s Student Health Services to name a few.
Jet Lee, the coordinator for SF State’s Safe Zone Ally Program, believes the resource fair is an event that showcases accessibility and obtainable resources. The Safe Zone Ally Program is a student and faculty-run group that seeks to address inequalities affecting students of all genders and sexual identities.
“It makes it seem like resources are accessible and available to all,” Lee said. “I think the more people are aware of it, the more they’re able to access it.”
The organizations tabled and provided information on gender-affirming care, internships and ways to contribute to the community. Through the resource fair, students had the opportunity to reach out to associations that could accommodate their needs.
Assistant Director of QTRC Lux Montes sees a lot of people come to San Francisco to express and explore their identities, often for the first time, but believes the city cannot “rest on laurels.”
“It’s a fight that never stops,” Montes said. “Community is not bred and born anywhere. It has to be fostered. It has to be nurtured and that’s what we’re doing here.”
A study by UCLA’s Williams Institute School of Law showed that people in the LGBTQ community choose colleges in a LGBTQ-friendly area four times more than their counterparts. Twice as many LGBTQ people left home to attend distant colleges to get away from family as did their non-LGBTQ peers.
Chloe Simson, the director for QTRC, is writing their master’s program thesis on the lost history of the Queer & Trans Resource Center
“SF State is supposed to be a queer mecca but SF State doesn’t necessarily have all of the resources available to serve queer and trans students,” Simson said. “We’re trying to orient them to these organizations that can do the work. Just letting them know visibly that there are organizations that can help them with whatever they’d like.”
