Pride on Campus

Community college groups offering safe spaces for LGBTQ+ students

By Craig Manning | June 17, 2023

In 2022, the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor campus) was named to the “Best of the Best Colleges and Universities for LGBTQ+ Students” list by Campus Pride, an organization that has been working to create safer college environments for LGBTQ+ students since 2001. U of M has an overall 5-star rating, which is calculated based on a variety of factors including campus safety, policy inclusion, institutional commitment, and recruitment and retention for LGBTQ+ students.

As the Campus Pride list is focused on major four-year institutions, Northern Express set out to see if some of the community colleges in our region offer the same welcoming vibe. We talked with Pride groups at both North Central Michigan College (NCMC) and Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) to find out how those groups are building community, what the past year has looked like for LGBTQ+ students at local colleges, and what comes next.

Building a Movement at North Central Michigan College

At NCMC, a Pride movement is picking up speed just as nationwide discrimination against LGBTQ+ populations hits a fever pitch. The effort is spearheaded by Kaitlyn Hammerle, a sophomore at the Petoskey community college. A 2022 graduate—and salutatorian—from Boyne Falls Public School, she says it didn’t take long for her to identify a clear need for more LGBTQ+ support and visibility on the NCMC campus.

“I really noticed when I got here that there was a need for change on campus,” Hammerle explains. “I met a lot of professors and other faculty members who were very, very supportive of the community or were even part of the LGBTQ+ community. And I thought, ‘Maybe there’s a need on campus for an organization, and they could probably help.’”

Now about six months into its existence, the NCMC Pride organization—called the Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA)—has adopted a mission of “making this campus safer and more welcoming to those in the LGBTQIA+ community.” During the school year, the group meets twice per month, providing a safe place for members to gather, enjoy one another’s company, and discuss “issues that might arise on campus.”

For Hammerle, who serves as GSA’s president, one of the first big accomplishments for the group was getting NCMC to implement a “name change request button” as part of the online student portal.

“Previously, a big, big thing on campus was that trans students didn’t know how to change their name in the system,” she explains—an issue that often led to teachers unintentionally deadnaming or misgendering those students in classes. “And that was through no fault of the teachers. They’d have a certain name in their computer, and wouldn’t know [a trans student had changed their name] unless they were told directly.”

As Hammerle explains it, the old process for changing names and genders within the NCMC system was difficult and convoluted, involving complex paperwork, identification documents, and more. GSA worked with the college’s tech department to create a simple all-online workaround that makes it easier for trans and gender-nonconforming students to convey to professors and other faculty what they prefer to be called.

“Now, there’s literally just a button that you click [on the portal] when you log in,” Hammerle says. “You can fill out a name change request, and it gets sent through the tech department to make sure that it’s an appropriate name and no one is abusing the system. It went from being a really difficult process to a situation where students can get their information updated in the system in less than 24 hours.”

As for events, GSA helped plan and execute a community Pride Month event in Petoskey called Rhythm & Roots, which celebrated the LGBTQ+ population through art, music, poetry, and a community panel discussion. GSA is also already in talks with students and professors to plan a similar celebration for the fall semester, which would focus specifically on highlighting queer voices—including songwriters, poets, and speakers—on the NCMC campus.

Keeping Pride Alive at Northwestern Michigan College

While GSA is still in its early days at NCMC, Traverse City’s Northwestern Michigan College has had a student Pride organization for years.

Even beyond that student group, NMC has grown over time into something of a hub for acceptance and inclusion in the community. The college prioritized diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as part of the strategic plan it adopted at the beginning of last year, which led to the hire of the first DEI-focused position in the college’s history. The NMC campus was also the venue for Up North Pride’s Pride Carnival earlier this month, and there are currently rainbow signs dotted across the NMC campus that proclaim “Everyone Is Welcome at NMC.”

Despite the strong track record for LGBTQ+ support at NMC, the student group that promotes some of that visibility has struggled to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to NMC Human Resources Specialist Denny Nguyen—who was a member of the NMC Pride group in the late 2010s when he was a student and who now serves as one of its faculty advisors—the organization was “very different” and “much more active” before COVID. That trend is a common one for NMC student groups, he says: Activity and engagement in these groups largely fell off in March 2020 and, with a few exceptions, hasn’t fully recovered.

“As a result, we don’t actually have a lot of students who are actively participating [in NMC Pride] activities,” Nguyen admits. “I think we only have a couple students who come to meetings regularly.”

Nguyen recalls how, prior to the pandemic, having an active NMC Pride group helped him feel “very supported” as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Now, with fewer students involved, he says “it’s harder to organize any kinds of activities or programming on campus,” which he worries could have a negative impact on newer students who haven’t had an opportunity to build community on campus through other channels.

Not that Nguyen or his fellow NMC Pride advisor Christine Mac are giving up.

“I do think people have still been looking for this type of community,” Nguyen says. “I’ve gotten lots of communication from students who are interested in joining a group, and maybe the timing and scheduling just hasn’t worked out for them yet. But they do want to have a space where they can hang out with other people who are part of the LGBTQ+ community and just share space with them. So, I absolutely still think it’s important for us to have that.”

Looking ahead to the 2023-24 school year, Nguyen is hopeful that NMC Pride can get a bit closer to its pre-COVID size and reach. That could mean adopting a different schedule, offering more mixers and social events on campus, promoting NMC Pride meetings to non-LGBTQ+ students as a place where they can learn to be better allies, or finding ways to partner with the NMC administration and the college’s DEIB Advisory Council to drive even more top-down efforts at making the campus a more accepting place.

One specific goal, Nguyen notes, is to expand NMC’s “clothing closet,” which works like a food pantry, but with the goal of offering professional clothing for students. NMC Pride wants to make it so the closet offers “a wider variety or selection for folks who might be transitioning or gender-nonconforming.”

Are We Safe Here?

It’s a question more and more members of the queer community have had to ask themselves lately. In response to increasing anti-LGBTQ+ legislation around the country, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC)—which describes itself as “the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization”—has declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. for the first time in its 40-year history.

So how do Hammerle and Nguyen feel about safety and acceptance on campus for their groups?

Overall, Hammerle says the quick growth of GSA and the support from college faculty and administration have made her feel “100 percent safe” on the NCMC campus. While she’s not aware of any violence or threats to the LGBTQ+ community at the college, Hammerle does tell Northern Express that there are still signs of intolerance among some segments of the student body. (For instance, some members of the GSA group have been ordered by other students to stop holding hands with their partners.)

“I do think there are people on campus who are a little bit more closed-minded or who do have some kind of homophobia in their lives,” Hammerle says. “And they tend to stay in groups, which can make it feel even more intimidating [to encounter them].”

Despite the slower-than-expected reboot of the NMC Pride group, Nguyen is of the mind that NMC remains a safe and inclusive place to be an LGBTQ+ student—even if there is always room for improvement.

“I’ve definitely had lots of students who have expressed that they feel incredibly safe at NMC,” Nguyen concludes. “They feel like we have spaces for students where they can feel free to be themselves, where they’re accepted, and where they don’t have to fear for their safety. But I also have heard from other students who have had interactions where they don’t feel like they’re able to express themselves how they want to. So, everyone has different experiences, and it’s our job to just keep moving things in the right direction.”