The LGBTQIA+ BU Student Task Force is composed of current students and alumni. Pictured are BU Student Government Senate chair Hanna Dworkin (CAS’24) (from left), with task force members Michael Arellano (CAS’24), Kris Berg (CGS’20, CAS’22, SSW’26), Christa Rose (CAS’22, GRS’22), Leonardo Ruiz (CAS’24), Lara Werneck (CAS’23), Sergio Aguirre (CAS’25), and Savannah Majarwitz (CAS’22). Photo courtesy of the LGBTQIA+ BU Student Task Force

LGBTQIA+

LGBTQIA+ BU Student Task Force Report Makes Recommendations for Achieving a More Inclusive BU

Among them: increasing mental health resources, adding more gender-neutral bathrooms

There were multiple players involved in the creation of Boston University’s new LGBTQIA+ Student Resource Center, but one group in particular stood out: the student activists who spent years advocating for its creation.

In the spring of 2022, seven students formed the LGBTQIA+ BU Student Task Force, a coalition dedicated to making BU more inclusive for LGBTQIA+ students. They were inspired by the University’s one-time LGBTQIA+ task force for faculty and staff, whose work culminated in the creation of the LGBTQIA+ Center for Faculty & Staff in 2021.

This task force’s goal? Surveying BU’s queer population and compiling a report with recommendations to submit to University administration about making campus more equitable. Ultimately, the task force would submit 16 recommendations across the areas of housing, student orientation, registration, and more at the end of the year. Topping the list? The creation of a professionally staffed resource center for LGBTQIA+ students at BU. The center, which BU just announced, is slated to open in the fall.

The task force comprises Michael Arellano (CAS’24), Sergio Aguirre (CAS’25), Kris Berg (CGS’20, CAS’22, SSW’26), Savannah Majarwitz (CAS’22), Christa Rose (CAS’22, GRS’22), Leonardo Ruiz (CAS’24), and Lara Werneck (CAS’23). Task force advisors are staff members Sarah Miller, director of undergraduate studies in the College of Arts & Sciences’ women, gender, and sexuality studies program; Mae Petti (SSW’21), former violence prevention program manager with the Sexual Assault Response & Prevention Center; and JAKE Small, former assistant director of career services in the College of Communication. BU’s Student Government Senate also endorsed and assisted the task force’s work.

One of the task force’s driving goals was ensuring that BU’s LGBTQIA+ population felt heard, Arellano says: “We thought it was incredibly important to make sure that LGBTQIA+ students had the platform to talk about what their experience being a queer student at BU was like. So much of our solutions were inspired and driven by what we’ve heard from our peers.” Throughout the process, “we had this understanding that what we were fighting for wasn’t just limited to the experiences of the task force members; it was part of the larger experience of the queer student community,” Arellano notes.

The task force took a three-step approach in order to compile its recommendations: researching what other universities with strong LGBTQIA+ student support programs were doing for their student population, creating and disseminating a questionnaire to LGBTQIA+ students at BU, and combining research with student responses to write the group’s 126-page report. 

The group used the report submitted by the faculty and staff task force as a model. “We took a really research-driven and academic approach to student advocacy,” Berg says. “We felt that because this is a research institution, BU would really want to see the data” regarding systemic issues in the queer student experience.

For example, regarding the recommendation to create more gender-neutral bathrooms at BU, 90 percent of survey respondents indicated they would like more all-gender bathrooms on the Charles River Campus. On average, respondents reported a satisfaction level of 2.43/5 with the CRC’s current number and distribution of all-gender bathrooms. The location students said they would most like to see more all-gender bathrooms? The College of Arts & Sciences building, which has only one gender-neutral bathroom for its roughly 7,000 enrolled undergraduate students. 

“Some buildings have several gender-neutral bathrooms and others have zero, leaving me with the choice of either going into the wrong bathroom or going out of my way to another building to find a bathroom, which has sometimes made me miss class unnecessarily,” wrote one anonymous respondent. 

One of the report’s largest areas of focus was housing. While BU already has gender-neutral and gender-affirming housing, it doesn’t go far enough in terms of safety and accessibility for transgender, gender-nonconforming, and intersex (TGNCI) students, Aguirre says.

“A lot of what our housing section is about is essentially making BU Housing more inclusive for TGNCI students, while also maintaining that there isn’t more economic burden put on them,” they say. Housing also places students by legal sex instead of gender in many of its buildings. As a result, “there is almost no way to be intelligible in that system as a trans person,” Aguirre says.

The task force’s housing sub-recommendations include placing all students by gender, removing the policy that prevents students with the same sex from living together in gender-neutral housing, expanding the dormitory locations where gender-affirming housing is located, and waiving any associated costs with relocating due to safety concerns, in addition to implementing LGBTQIA+ sensitivity training for Housing staff.

The task force first presented the report to BU administration at the end of 2022. Meetings continued leading up to the announcement of the new LGBTQIA+ Student Resource Center. “The effort of the LGBTQIA+ Student Taskforce to make the case for establishing the center is inspiring,” University President Robert A. Brown told BU Today when the center was announced. 

Ultimately, the group hopes their task force model opens the door for more advocacy for identity-based support at BU, members say. They note that BU’s administration has been “incredibly receptive.” They also hope the University makes an effort to prioritize hiring queer, trans, Black, and Indigenous people of color (QTBIPOC) staff for the new student resource center. 

“This is a really exciting time to be a BU student,” Arellano says. “I think this task force really marks a new legacy of student activism at BU, and of collaboration between activists and the University.”

The group members hope that resonates with the student population.

“I think it’s safe to say that no one expected what we ended up putting out” with the report, nor its success in achieving administrative buy-in, Arellano says, adding: “We hope that students will see the work that we did and be inspired, because, ultimately, we’re just students with a passion. If we can do it, other students can, too. Hopefully, we’ve paved that path.”