This is the first article in a two-part series addressing LGBT issues and the work that senior Sofia Nelson has done to eliminate biases. The first installment will focus on Nelson's work at Tufts. The second article, which will be printed in Thursday's paper, will focus on her work at the state and community levels.
Growing up in a small agricultural town in a conservative, religious part of Michigan, being a member of the queer community was not easy for senior Sofia Nelson. While living in this area, which was frequented by violence directed against gays, she developed a strong desire to fight for reform in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community. Now an established member of Tufts community, Nelson has worked relentlessly to achieve these goals.
"I appreciate my hometown, but I was very excited to come to Tufts and have the opportunity to be who I am — I didn't feel safe to be back at home," she said. Tufts' commitment to the gay movement, small classes and friendly professors appealed to her.
But while she loves Tufts and the opportunities it has afforded her, she recognizes that the university is not perfect.
"When I think Tufts is doing something wrong, I usually have not kept quiet … but I would not spend so much time trying to change Tufts if I did not really care about Tufts, she said. "Like any place, it can do better."
Nelson has worked at Tufts LGBT Center since her freshman year. She has become involved with coordinating various programming events as well as creating and implementing policies.
In 2004, the Tufts administration added gender identity and expression to its non-discrimination clause. Since arriving at Tufts, Nelson has worked to ensure that this policy is integrated seamlessly into the community.
"I wasn't part of [the creation of the policy] because I was still in high school, but since then there have been efforts to make sure we stick with that non-discrimination policy," she said. "Just writing it down is not enough; we need to implement it. Everyone from human resources to professors needs to understand what that means and how their actions need to be augmented in accordance with that."
Nelson is particularly interested in transgender issues. At Tufts, she has worked on the labeling of single stall bathrooms on campus. As a result of her efforts, the two single-stall bathrooms in the reading room of Tisch Library, which just a few years ago were labeled male and female, are now labeled gender-neutral or unisex.
"I've worked on making sure that all single-stall bathrooms are gender neutral, to allow gender nonconforming students a space to feel safe when using the restroom," she said.
Nelson also focuses some of her efforts on increasing awareness of and support for the transgender community.
"I have worked to make sure programming around campus involving queer issues brings in more transgender speakers focusing on the transgender community," she said. "I think having conversations with the administration about broader transgender issues is important in order to educate people. Lots of people haven't heard the term or don't know what it means. There is a lot of education that needs to be done around these issues to make sure that people aren't acting in a way that hurts other people without even knowing it. This is the first step to creating change."
In her efforts to bring change to the Hill, Nelson has been involved in LGBT awareness events like Coming Out Day and Day of Silence and has helped bring in speakers like Staceyann Chin, a poet and artist who speaks about the intersection of gender, class, race, sexuality, and nationality.
One LGBT project sticks out to Nelson as her one of her proudest accomplishments at Tufts: the Open Letter Coalition.
"Basically, a bunch of students were hurt by various events on campus — incidents involving the Primary Source, the university's response to those incidents, the lack of diversity training for students and faculty, the lack of faculty of color, the low retention rates of students of color," she said. "So we wrote a letter/ad that appeared in the Daily and got many signatures directed to the administration about changes we felt were necessary in relation to issues of diversity at Tufts."
The open letter was a collaborative process; students from all types of groups on campus, from the Muslim Students Association to the Africana Center to the Asian American Center to the LGBT Center participated. According to Nelson, at least ten students contributed pieces of writing to the open letter, and it was coalesced into one document.
"I think that that collaboration is really important — students from all these groups coming together to talk about issues of class, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity … to have these kinds of conversations," she said.
Nelson feels that the open letter has been successful at creating a dialogue between the administration and students and in helping the administration understand student concerns and students understand the constraints the university is under.
"We've had conversations with many administrative officials about student concerns, and the administration has been very cooperative. Groups of students [and I] have met with a trustee, the provost and others to talk about what we can do to make things better for minority groups on campus," she said.
Nelson is proud that she is using her education to create positive change in the community.
"I feel like I'm putting my academic understanding of intersexual impression into practice in collaborative work environments with other students to create the change we felt was necessary, to begin the process to create that change."
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