Georgia Southern students protest removal of LGBTQIA+ training program, offer demands

Students at Georgia Southern University's (GSU) Statesboro and Armstrong campuses led sit-ins on Monday to protest changes to the University System of Georgia's (USG) protocols regarding access to LGBTQIA+ resources and services.

These changes stem from updates to USG's Human Resources Administrative Practice General Criteria for Employment policy instituted on July 1, 2023. That change has resulted in the removal of the optional Safe Space/Zone training, a workshop offered by a third-party that trained staff, faculty, and sometimes, students about queer identities and allyship.

Students claimed that around the same time the program was removed from campus and online, other LGTBQIA+ resources became harder to access through GSU's website. In an email statement sent on April 25, USG's administration wrote, "The University is undergoing a website redesign to provide an improved user interface and experience, streamlining content so that audiences can easily access the information they need."

GSU's Executive Vice President – Enrollment Management, Marketing, and Student Success Alejandra Sosa Pieroni said the website redesign has been going on since September 2023 as the university culls 100k pages of content down to less than 10,000.

While students claim erasure of LGBTQIA+ services, administrators claim policy changes and IT maintenance. Regardless of the narrative, the sit-ins were peaceful and brought attention to LGBTQIA+ resources on campus. No incidents of violence or arrests were reported.

Students concerns and demands

According to a student-written open letter posted by Boro Pride on April 24, GSU students from both campuses claimed "a vast majority of signage, resources, and programs offered by Georgia Southern University used to affirm and support LGBTQIA+ individuals on campus were rapidly removed from physical and digital campus resources."

Boro Pride is a Statesboro-based nonprofit organization, established in 2019, that advocates for LGBTQIA+ populations in communities throughout Georgia. The statement ends by claiming that GSU's "actions to reduce LGBTQIA+ visibility and access to services contradict the principles of equity, inclusion, and diversity that the institution purports to uphold, undermining a sense of community and safety for all members of the campus."

GSU's April 25 email to students, faculty and staff responded to that particular point: "All services and programs offered to our students – including those offered by the Counseling and Health Centers – remain available to you, and there has been no change to these services and programs."

Safe Zone training was removed, however.

Students also once were able to access resources through a university webpage dedicated to LGBTQIA+ information. When students try to access that link, they are now directed to GSU's Inclusive Excellence page, which does not provide direct links to university LGTBQIA+ information nor does it contain any LGBTQIA+ language.

Specific services and resources are now found at GSU's Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program page under "Students" and then "Student Resources."

Sosa Pieron said students can also access the services and resources via the university's intranet. Multiple students at the sit-in claimed to not know what the intranet was. Sosa Pieroni explained that the disconnect is likely because the intranet was designed to be "seamless," meaning students would not necessarily know if they were on it when accessing webpages on campus. She said GSU continues to work with IT on Google Analytics to increase search engine optimization, because older or "broken links" may have caused students to be unable to access certain pages.

This explanation may underpin students' perceived erasure of LGBTQIA+ resources, but not the circumstances surrounding Safe Zone's removal.

As reported last week by GSU's student newspaper The George-Anne, President Kyle Marrero asserted during the most recent Faculty Senate meeting that USG's General Criteria for Employment policy update necessitated the training's removal. Page 8 of the policy states that "no institution training may include affirmations, ideological tests, or oaths (including diversity statements)."

Annalee Ashley, GSU's vice president for external affairs, communications, and strategic initiatives and chief of staff to the president, said Safe Space/Zone "as branded...trains individuals to support, accept and affirm LGBTQ+ populations without sufficient clarity that the training refers to activity within the scope of your government job."

According to GSU officials, the student's perception that LGBTQIA+ resources, paraphernalia, and signage is being systemically removed is simply not the case.

Professor of Sociology in GSU's College of Behavioral and Social Sciences Nancy Malcom teaches in the Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies program at the Statesboro campus. She said, "It's important to listen to students is what I've learned over the years...what they see, what they hear and what they experience is valid."

Malcom, who has taken the Safe Zone training twice (once in 2008 and again, after an update, in 2013) said she did not recall the training requiring oaths or affirmations. She conceded the training may have been updated since 2013 but stated that fellow faculty who have more recently taken it told her there was no oath or affirmation requirement.

The Savannah Morning News (SMN) has reached out the Safe Space/Zone for clarification but has yet to receive a response.

Students used Monday's protest to share how they feel the changes "undermine equity, diversity and social justice," according to a flier passed out to attendees. Beyond the resource removals, the flier cited additional student and faculty concerns, such as:

• Notice was given that student hosted drag events would no longer be permitted on campus

• Pride flags removed from GSU bookstore shelves

• University staff being asked to remove LGBTQIA+-affirming signage from public spaces, such as pride flags and stickers indicating their offices as Safe Spaces for LGBTQIA+ individuals

SMN is looking into the validity of each of these claims.

Statesboro Campus

Among the hundreds of students who attended the sit-in at Russell Union student center was Ellen Murphy, a third year grad student who coordinated the Statesboro effort.

According to Murphy students and faculty were particularly alarmed by a statement issued last week by Director of University Communications Jenifer Wise that said GSU was in the process of creating a "new training that will educate our community on values of civility and mutual respect, open debate and discourse, as well as individual freedoms and protections under the law.”

Murphy said students and faculty took issue with lack of specifics regarding what those changes might be, who would be making them and when a new training module would be available. “That lack of transparency creates a vague space,” Murphy said.

Assistant Professor of International and Political Sciences Kate Perry, who also participated in the Safe Zone Training when it was available, said GSU was probably going to draw inspiration from the University of Georgia’s (UGA) Dawg Ally, a training workshop similar to Safe Space created by UGA.

“You need a specific type of training to help LGBTQ+ individuals, and that’s what we were getting with Safe Zone, and that’s not what UGA does,” Perry said. She claims UGA's program is "very surface-level and basic.”

Caleb Owen, a junior in theater at GSU said he wants a training to come back, and he supports taking it away to revise it and make it better.

Armstrong Campus in Savannah

More than 60 students and community members showed at the Armstrong campus student union. One student, who asked to only be identified only as Ro, said students want GSU to readopt Safe Zone or offer a similar program. Ro also reiterated claims that LGBTQIA+ or "pride" merchandise was removed from the university store.

Sosa Pieroni said, "That's untrue. Nothing has been removed from any of our libraries or bookstores."

Ro said she and some students went to the university store the other day and the "pride merch was nowhere to be found." On Monday, a table with LGBTQIA+ pride merchandise was featured just inside the door and across from the checkout counter at the university bookstore.

Melanie Acosta, an accelerated freshman who plans to join the nursing college next fall, said, "The problem that we are addressing is that the accessibility to the marketing of it [LGBTQIA+ resources and services] has been taken away. If students don't know it's there, how are they supposed to use it?" She was most concerned about incoming freshman not being aware of LGBTQIA+ student groups and organizations.

Alyssa Klas, a graduate student protestor studying Experimental Psychology, said (along with Acosta) that students had never received a communication about the removal of the Safe Zone training or plans to reinstitute an updated training prior to Boro Pride's posting of the April 24 open letter.

GSU faculty member David Bringman, who attended to support students, said the first communication he had received from GSU leadership about any of the changes came on April 25. The email to which he referred was the university's April 25 response to the students' April 24 open letter.

Representatives from Deep Center Savannah and Cultivate Savannah were present on the Armstrong campus while Human Rights Campaign representatives attended in Statesboro to offer support. No official student or community group claimed responsibility for organizing the sit-ins, but students said they were part of a coalition of students and community members.

This is a developing story.

Destini Ambus is the general assignment reporter for Chatham County municipalities and Joseph Schwartzburt is the education and workforce development reporter for the Savannah Morning News. You can reach them at dambus@gannett.com and jschwartzburt@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Georgia policy changes impact GSU LGBTQAI+ resources