Scott Chessare (SFS ’10) has stood here before. He has heard this chant before. And he has faced these challenges before.

Two years ago, in response to a bias-related assault that took place in September 2007, Chessare, then the co-chair of GU Pride, [led about 70 gay, lesbian and allied students](https://www.thehoya.com/news/campus-rallies-against-prejudice/) from Red Square to University President John J. DeGioia’s office in Healy Hall, waving banners and shouting, “Hate crimes are ridiculous / My Georgetown is better than this.”

On Sunday, Chessare was back in Red Square, [standing with 50 classmates](https://www.thehoya.com/news/red-sq-attacks-draw-student-response/) against two new alleged anti-gay assault. The same chant rose from the crowd.

The difference this time? Less defiant activism, more somber solidarity.

The reason behind the difference is the groundbreaking presence of [the university’s LGBTQ Resource Center](https://www.thehoya.com/news/lgbtq-center-finds-leadership/), which has educated the community and helped foster a welcoming environment for gay and lesbian students, faculty and staff since opening its doors on Aug. 26, 2008. With the center in place, GU Pride and other student groups, including the Georgetown Solidarity Committee and Take Back the Night, have seen their goal from two years ago – to have a prominent voice and a safe space on campus – institutionalized at Georgetown.

But now, in the wake of the unprecedented success of the 2007 campaign, some have questioned what the movement’s next step will be to ensure a welcoming atmosphere for gay and lesbian students – especially after the most recent spate of allegedly hate-motivated episodes, which included a [written slur](https://www.thehoya.com/news/dps-blotter-101/) found affixed to the door of the center on Monday morning.

“One of the struggles for mobilizing the community is, unlike in 2007, there isn’t a clear, unifying goal, like the creation of the center was, for the students and faculty and staff to rally around,” said Chessare, who led GU Pride during the Out For Change campaign, the push for university reforms that followed the 2007 assaults. “What we saw [at Monday’s vigil] was people coming together to oppose hate, and hate is an abstract thing, not a tangible goal. For us to stay together and mobilize around that is a lot harder.”

The center’s staff of five – two full-time professionals and three student staffers – has brought LGBTQ students, prospective students and alumni together and made their issues public in a way they never were before. Carlos León-Ojeda (COL ’10), co-chair of GU Pride, said the center’s most significant assets are its presence as an available resource for LGBTQ students and its institutional relationship with the university.

Sitting in her office on Wednesday, the center’s director, Shiva Subbaraman, said she did not see the two recent assaults and the slur on the center’s door – which she said was directed at her – as setbacks to the community’s work.

“We can’t prevent crimes,” she said. “So many students who have come in recently have said, `I’m scared,’ but now, they feel like they can go to the administration and people won’t jump down their throats. The center has opened a huge space for them in the whole university.”

The transformation of office space on the Leavey Center’s third floor into a resource center for the gay community has set Georgetown apart from its fellow Jesuit universities in the United States. As the only Jesuit institution with such a center in the country, Georgetown came under scrutiny after University President John J. DeGioia announced [plans to establish the center](https://www.thehoya.com/news/ministries-embrace-lgbtq-center-after-degioias-request/) in November 2007. Various Catholic organizations criticized the university for endorsing what they said were activities contrary to Jesuit teachings.

Subbaraman recalled an alumnus who, having graduated 50 years ago, visited the center during a Homecoming weekend and cried, saying he never thought he would see the day gay and lesbian students would have such support at Georgetown. With reunions, open houses and LGBTQ receptions for alumni at John Carroll Weekend in New York City, the center has “brought in a lot of alumni, most of whom had never felt welcomed,” Subbaraman said.

The center has successfully tackled many of the missions with which it was tasked in 2008, including ensuring that hate crimes are made public, educating the community and providing resources for LGBTQ students and allies.

Two years ago, campus was not alerted of the first assault until nearly three weeks after it took place – this time, Public Safety Alerts were sent in an e-mail within 24 hours of both reported attacks. The Department of Public Safety has also appointed Officer Elizabeth Fendrich to be its official LGBTQ liaison. She will be trained to respond to the needs of this community, which, Subbaraman said, can sometimes be different than those of other groups.

Educational discussion groups, trainings and workshops have also been facilitated by the center in conjunction with Residence Life and the Athletic Department, among other university departments.

“Education is the biggest thing,” said Joe Graumann (SFS ’11), who chairs GU Pride with León-Ojeda. “People hate what they fear and they fear what they don’t know,” he added, echoing the sentiments of 2007.

In response to the concern that those who come to the center for educational purposes are a self-selective group, León-Ojeda spoke about efforts to make the center and its work more public, such as having a presence at high-profile events like GAAP weekends. Subbaraman noted that part of the educational process was simply the center’s existence – she said people will feel more comfortable with the gay community as they become more familiar with it through the center’s work.

The center has made its mark among other resource centers on campus, including the nearly 20-year-old Women’s Center and the more established Center for Multicultural Equity and Access. In terms of the number and types of services it has offered, the LGBTQ Resource Center has matched and, in some cases, outstripped its counterparts. While none of the centers offer professional counseling, the LGBTQ Resource Center and CMEA have specialized counselors in Georgetown’s Counseling and Psychiatric Services to handle issues specific to LGBTQ and minority groups.

All three resource centers have offered significant programming during New Student Orientation and April’s Hoya Saxa Weekend, which welcomes minority and first-generation students. The LGBTQ Resource Center has even slightly surpassed the Women’s Center in staff size, having hired a program coordinator, Matthew LeBlanc, in February. The Women’s Center has one full-time staff member and three student staffers.

Georgetown’s unique creation of a full-fledged LGBTQ center as part of a Jesuit university’s administration has not gone unnoticed. “The biggest change is for incoming students,” Subbaraman said. “Freshmen have said they chose Georgetown over other Jesuit schools because of the LGBTQ Center.”

Last week, Campus Ministry hosted representatives of Jesuit universities and colleges for a national conference, in which Chessare spoke about the center and the more inclusive environment it has created on campus. Attendees of his talk, he said, were there to hear what Georgetown has learned from having the center and, perhaps, to bring these ideas back to their campuses.

Fourteen months after the center opened, Subbaraman still has plans for advancing the inclusion and awareness of the gay community at Georgetown – for instance, she is currently working to bring a national LGBTQ Catholic conference to campus in 2013. She also revealed her ultimate goal to lead a class at Georgetown in which she would teach the history and identity of the LGBTQ community and train undergraduates to talk to other classes about their experiences as gay and allied students.

Subbaraman’s attitude that recent events should not overshadow the concrete progress the center has made is reflected in the outlooks of past and present GU Pride leaders, as well as the administration, representatives of which attended a forum hosted by the LGBTQ Resource Center last night to discuss hate-related issues on campus. Graumann said he thought anti-gay assaults like the two recent alleged incidents make the LGBTQ community’s cause more visible.

But this is not to say that the assaults and the slur left on the LGBTQ Resource Center’s door did not come as blows to the community, which has gone without a single reported anti-gay attack on campus since the center opened. León-Ojeda and Chessare agreed that the recent attacks have been disappointing for many GU Pride members, who believed hate crimes and anti-gay epithets were a thing of the past at Georgetown. “A lot of us thought that sort of thing wouldn’t happen again and Georgetown was beyond that,” Chessare said. “These assaults in some ways sort of demonstrate the continuing need for [the center].”

As some grievances of the gay community at Georgetown have been wiped away with the implementation of the center, the past two weeks have revealed that the community continues to face hurdles.

“The challenge for the new generation of student leaders is to figure out how to channel the students that are coming together toward a concrete goal,” Chessare said, admitting that he was not sure what this would be. “The community together is going to have to figure this out.”