Journal of College & University Student Housing Vol 49, No. 1 - 95

Designing an LLC for LGBTQ+ Students
LGBTQ+ students are one such group that potentially experiences
residential life in problematic ways due to the often gendered
and heteronormative climates present in campus environments.
allowing practitioners to nurture and support this identity, as well as facilitate the development
of other salient identities that students held. Students also emphasized that
the space should support intersecting identities.
For example, we were talking about the . . . symposium and how a lot of the spaces
that we're going to enter are White spaces and in these White spaces, of course, there
are White people but . . . there's often times when . . . people will say things and they're
like, " Oh I'm not racist, I'm gay. " That's something that we generally encounter and
that's just . . . something we have to navigate because we're Black and queer. So, you
enter a space assuming it's a safe space 'cause it fits one of your identities, but doesn't
fit the other one. It's not on us to pick and choose which identity we want to go with today.
We should be able to always be our full Black queer selves in every space and either they
accept it, or they get out.
Students believed that addressing issues of exclusion and developing an LLC
devoted to LGBTQ+ identities would help to create an affirming and supportive space
for them. They felt encouraged that a community that is accepting of their gender
identity and sexual orientation would create and develop intersectional spaces on
campus. This aligns with previous research that has found that intentionally built
LLCs have a positive impact on students' overall sense of belonging.
Staff and Training
Throughout the focus groups, students emphasized the impact of staff on the LLC
experience. Given the amount of interaction students have with both student and professional
staff in campus housing, it is important to train staff to be well versed in a
variety of issues and skills. Students specifically recommended training them on bias
response, conflict and mediation, LGBTQ+ history and issues, university history, mental
health, sexual health, and transgender rights. Students shared that staff, particularly
student staff, would benefit from a deeper understanding of LGBTQ+ history and issues
that specifically affect the LGBTQ+ community. Students also suggested hiring
professional staff with backgrounds in counseling, citing the prevalence of mental
health issues that affect the LGBTQ+ community. Furthermore, they emphasized the
role that staff play in creating inclusive spaces. One noted the importance specifically
of having staff who represented an array of intersecting identities:
I think having as intersectional [a staff] as possible would be very good. . . . I don't really
know how you would fix problems within the community based on race or sex
or whatever. So I think having [staff] who are in charge of fixing these problems,
who experience these problems, would be better equipped to handle them, not even
92 The Journal of College and University Student Housing

Journal of College & University Student Housing Vol 49, No. 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Journal of College & University Student Housing Vol 49, No. 1