Why you should get involved with your campus Queer-Straight Alliance
I met my wife at a Queer-Straight Alliance (QSA) meetup my freshman year of college.
It was late September, the second or third week of school for our quarter-system campus, and our QSA (called Rainbow Alliance) was having an outdoor event one night. We both showed up to join the festivities, and by happenstance, a senior scooted us together to take a picture in front of a campus landmark. Though we didn’t even exchange names that night, I cherished the photo — one of the first times I’d ever participated in a public, visibly queer community. I even made it my profile picture on Facebook.
Three years later, the girl — whose name I later learned was Kaitlyn — and I reconnected over a journalism project. We’d been tangentially aware of each other throughout our years at school, including seeing each other at Rainbow Alliance meetings and events but had never spent meaningful time together. We discovered quickly that we had a ton in common: mundane things, like devotion to the punk-pop bands of our teens and the classic pairing of grilled cheese and tomato soup, but also more deep-seated values, like our shared desire to improve the lives of other queer people through journalism and media. By the end of senior year, we started dating, and five years after that, we got married.
I know that our story is unique; there is certainly no guarantee you’ll meet the love of your life at a Rainbow Alliance gathering. And while meeting Kaitlyn that night was a lucky coincidence, participating in LGBTQ+ events on campus changed my life in more ways than one. Through queer campus organizations like this one, I had the chance to meet local queer community leaders, participate in protests and other displays of activism, and make friends and personal connections that I’ve maintained almost a decade later.
In fact, studies also indicate that LGBTQ+ college students who participate in queer organizations report better mental health than those who don’t, are “more likely to develop positive personal relationships,” and that these groups might even contribute to making campuses safer for LGBTQ+ students. Indeed, it’s an undeniably powerful thing to share space with others who have similar experiences and identities. College was the first time I felt brave enough to do it, and the support I received from my QSA was invaluable.
So, while you might not meet your future spouse at your first meeting (though you could!), there are tons of reasons it’s worthwhile to get involved with your campus QSA. Here are a few that made the biggest impact on me.
Opportunities to learn and grow
I went to college in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The landmark ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized marriage equality nationwide, was still a few years away. Though I wanted to consider myself a queer activist, I knew woefully little about issues like transgender identity and intersectionality — and they weren’t talked about much in the mainstream, either.
My QSA was an incredible source of knowledge about these and countless more LGBTQ+ issues. It was at our meetings that I first learned about topics like gender-neutral pronouns and the history of queer resistance and liberation. While these are lessons we should all be learning early and often, it was especially meaningful for me to learn about them surrounded by other queer and trans people.
Discussing these topics in that environment helped me understand the full impact of what we were talking about — that the ability of our organization to exist and gather safely in the first place was rooted in a shared understanding of these issues. Those lessons were invaluable, and they’re part of what makes QSA spaces so sacred.
As LGBTQ+ teachers and allies across the country face harsh penalties for even acknowledging queer and trans people in the classroom — in places like my home state of Florida, for example — I feel even more lucky to have had a space to learn and grow in my own community. Not every lesson came easily. I remember being unclear about why sharing pronouns mattered in one early meeting, and resistant to sharing my own, but I’ve carried them all with me as I’ve grown, especially because I didn’t have the opportunity to learn these things earlier. Every LGBTQ+ young person deserves that chance.
A chance to get involved in your community
It’s pretty typical for a QSA to serve as a hub for local LGBTQ+ organizing. Sometimes, this can look like going to protests or demonstrations together, and other times, it can take the shape of volunteering or otherwise giving back to the community, like helping out at local shelters for queer youth, gathering to write postcards to incarcerated people, phone-banking for LGBTQ+ political candidates, petitioning for the creation of gender-neutral bathrooms on campus and plenty more. While this kind of work can sometimes be emotionally taxing, it's made easier with the support of a like-minded group that has your back.
As a college freshman, I went to my first-ever protest for queer rights as a group outing with my QSA. It was a gathering in downtown Chicago in solidarity with the National Equality March on Washington, D.C. in late 2009, and at the time, it was the most queer and trans people I’d ever seen taking collective action. By myself, I would have felt far too intimidated to participate in the protest and feel safe. But with the rest of the QSA by my side, I felt empowered to show up publicly as a queer person and demand equal treatment.
Networking and connections
Despite lots of progress in recent years, it’s not easy to navigate the professional world as a queer or trans person. Many workplaces and institutions may claim to be LGBTQ+-friendly on paper, but the real-life experiences of their queer and trans employees may not align with that story. When you’re in college, just beginning to figure out what your professional life might look like, how are you supposed to parse through all your options to find the organizations that are safe and supportive?
A QSA can help point you in the right direction. Older students and campus staff advisers can support you with their own recommendations of LGBTQ+-affirming internships, grad school programs and even job opportunities. And if they’ve experienced any hostility from unfriendly institutions, they’ll be able to warn you about those, too.
Friends and community
I graduated from college almost 10 years ago, but I still keep in touch with many of the folks I met through my school QSA (and occasionally connect with dozens more through social media). Through Rainbow Alliance, some of the people I met became close friends, some became colleagues and academic thought partners, others became allies even though we weren’t close and, of course, I also met my spouse.
When you meet someone at a QSA, it’s likely you’re connecting with a person who might understand parts of your identity that you may have found difficult to share in the past, even if your experiences aren’t exactly alike. Though LGBTQ+ people are not a monolith, and we span lots of identities and political leanings, QSAs are more likely than most spaces to draw together folks who care about equality and justice. And when you’re in college and starting to figure out the issues that matter most to you, surrounding yourself with people who care about the same things you do is perhaps more important than ever.
The bottom line
No matter your identity, college can be an overwhelming time. Lots of student groups and activities can be worthwhile, but there’s something especially meaningful about finding community with other queer and trans people during such an intense life stage. If you want to find friends, personal growth and a shared sense of purpose as an LGBTQ+ person, trying out your campus QSA is a great place to start.
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