Transcript of Eric's interview

Hi,
I'll post this right now.... I want to go over it again before I email it to everyone, but I thought you'd like to look it over.

1.What is the history of the Campus Center? Eric has been contacting people from the past to compile an oral history and written history for the website
Established in 1992 as a student organization. Some students didn’t feel that they were
Student C funding up and down
From the beginning they felt that they needed to provide support services
Mentoring programs, educational programming
Composition of the staff has changed over time, at times employing a specific orientation, but the center has evolved into a task specific type 8 students, 2 full time people and one upcoming half time slis student to maintain the collection next year.
New position will be responsible to collection development.
They have a budget for collection development which includes the various costs of access (to oclc, etc)
There has always been a goal that this should be a university provided service and should come from general revenue program dollars
Was completely funded by ASM initially. Four years ago, the students pushed to make this a gpr funded services and in 2003, they got some funding.
Funding for the director comes from grant income, special dollars.
Rest of the money comes from student fees.
Eric is the first full time non student director and they now have eight student staff positions
Seven years at the same location



2. Do you have partnerships with other organizations? If yes, which > ones?10% society – mainly for social events
Agitated for a second position for leadership, advising
The idea all along was to integrate into programming and activities to
Wide variety of organizations some want help, some don’t
Q Law, Social Sciences group,
Student Allied group advising through center

New Group Gay Hockey Club advising through center
Perception of non athleticism and encouragement to “fit” into the student community that diversity is the norm.
LGBT are all different people and don’t necessarily identify with each other, so support and assistance help with understanding and integration.
Expand horizons and understanding.

3. Do you share resources?
Yes, all the time. They even do some co-programming with Outreach.


4. What is your resource selection process? Always in search of, plus lots of groups contribute
A lot of the pamphlets are not explicitly gay, are not inherently LGBT oriented but some of them are like the magazines
Diva and Ms are women’s magazines, but most of them are trans, HIV positive, etc. Some of these are quarterly. A lot of Pop mags tend to have pretty boys and pretty women or strong women (stereotyping) but we buy those as well



> 5. How do you organize your resources?Organized on how it fits into the cramped space available. Lots of the brochures are taken after hours outside in the hall. Available for those not willing to come into the center. Eric is thoughtful about what kind of brochures are out in the hall, and tend to be predominantly LGBT


> 6. Do you have target audiences for your services? Who are you > targeting with your information?

> 7. How has the center changed since incorporation of your collection > into the GLS?

> 8. Have user groups changed in any noticeable way since > incorporation? Have you made any specific changes?
Emphatically Yes. We started doing the cataloging in August. Policy questions; they are showing as soon as cataloging begins, they weren’t going to check out initially, but they didn’t have more than 5 books catalogued when a student came in to request a book, so they checked it out for him.
People started coming in right away. Straight students working on a research paper, LGBT students interested in coming in to see the collection.
What to do and how to do it was an effort of all the librarians across campus. The library people paid for our computer and the connection to the Memorial Server. Paid in staff time. Librarians came in according to their expertise and really helped in the organization, set-up and educational aspects of the new library in the campus center.
48% of the materials in the center are unique to the center.
There are a lot of titles that are “crappy gay/lesbian” fiction. But there is a slis student studying GLBT press, so there is a use for those books, too.

How do you decide which groups to be affiliated with? (if there are any)Relationship with community members has changed a bit, as they now can ILL with the general public. The red box comes in once a week. The whole UW system and SCLS participate with them now. Don’t need the boxes yet, still carry them under an arm to get them back and forth.

2. How do you deal with issues of confidentiality?Two philosophies on confidentiality. Private space
If absolute privacy is necessary, Eric goes down to meet with someone over coffee. He has only cleared the room once or twice for confidentiality purposes.
Mentoring Coordinator – usually meets in another place on campus away from the center. Sensitive to the coming out process.
Couches and TV used to be in a corner and not be seen, even though they are not in a prominent area for passers-by
More recent philosophy has been for a more open and welcoming environment. Moved the TV and couches out to the main area. New TV system is multi use and can be used for information meetings. The number has quadrupled and double from last year with the new layout.
It’s really comfortable and inviting even though messy.

3. How do you think the campus center affects the university, the students, and the city of Madison as a whole?
General Community involvement. Privlege and responsibility to determine who to serve. Technically, you can’t be in the union unless you are a member, student, alum, guest of the above or a person in uniform.
Street people have union memberships in some cases
Community members who make students uncomfortable are asked to leave. If they think someone is there for the wrong reason, they can ask them to leave. The safety and comfort of their members is paramount.
They really guard carefully against possible predators, but are sensitive that some support groups need community members to come in.
They had a non student that was coming in who made people uncomfortable recently, and they asked them to leave.
No teens, no underage community members. Freshmen, with ID, sure, they refer others to Outreach and Briar Patch when they feel they need services. They also get a certain number of weird and harassing calls that they need to defend against.
Information Sharing – common with Outreach, plus occasional co-programming. They buy newspaper ads, ads in the Onion, standard flyers. No posters on kiosks, they get pulled down. They ad to Lots of List servs: Qgrads, weekly update, 10% society list was primary list for everyone, campus and community combined. Lots of Facebook postings to All of your Friends.
Incoming freshmen – listserv available to the LGBT housing LIasions and they can communicate through them

SOAR – students can mark that they want more information on LGBT Campus Center Every Fall, Eric sends them an email welcoming them, and notifiying them of all the kickoffs etc he can find.
Gay Straight alliance is what most high school students recognize.
Anyone who expresses an interest gets contacted.


Anti Gay question -
Opposition research is always important
We are oftentimes under attack by outside organizations that don’t belong to the u who claim they are being discriminated against for religious grounds when the “homo” organizations are supported.
There are strange emails from time to time that are obviously targeted to some unknown agenda. We don’t know what they are fishing for….. sexual predators? One posting can come to ten or twelve different people in the professional consortium. They can trace some of these to religious organization that are suspect.
One of the things that happens is that Petox Parents and families of ex gays.
Equal representation clause in the Bill of Rights is heavily used by the LGBT community. Separate is not equal a clause in the bill of rights. Different but the same is not the same.
Petox is fishing for a lawsuit if they are not included on the Center’s site and sends lots of information to LGBT. They said , We’d love to have your stuff!
So they put them on the websites with a warning that they have asked to be put on the resource list.
Eric always offers to have a link to their website, too, but they never take him up on it.
Eric says that oppositional resources and links are not incorporated into the educational materials because every LGBT student is already aware of these organizations.
Who we are is always under attack.