UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The President’s Commission on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equity (CLGBTQE) has posted a letter on the Office of Educational Equity’s website, supporting the administration’s denunciation of an event featuring controversial commentator and speaker Milo Yiannopoulos to be held on the University Park campus on Nov. 3.
"We want to take this opportunity to discuss the immediate and long-term impact of such events as they occur on our campuses, the broader context of limited safety, inclusion, and belonging that shapes the experience of sexual and gender minorities at Penn State, and CLGBTQE’s data-informed recommendations for how to improve these experiences and foster a campus climate wherein we can all thrive," states the letter.
The letter outlines a series of recommendations for consideration by University administration to help increase belonging and actively promote inclusion for sexual and gender diverse communities across all Penn State campuses, including the creation and funding of an LGBTQIA scholarly research center or consortium linking the campuses with a unified fellowship program as a primary purpose; the hiring of a new position with the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity supporting gender diverse, transgender, and non-binary education and support, while also assisting in the direct buildout of services for Black, Indigenous and people of color; and an interdisciplinary cluster hire of tenure-stream faculty with specializations in research concerning transgender and gender-diverse communities.
"We believe that our institutional response to these situations must actively promote the inclusion of sexual and gender minority communities," the letter states, "and that this means advancing policies and practices that actualize such inclusion. Such a commitment is long-term and ongoing, however, events and speakers that are meant to detract us from progress, must not prevail."