LBGTRC “celebrates, affirms, and empowers” MSU LGBTQA+ community

<p>“We have a family room, where people are often found napping or watching endless YouTube videos, but mostly just hanging out and connecting with one another and finding community because chosen community is so important to us in the LGBTQA+ community. We do a lot of trainings and workshops. <br> <br> “At the end of the day, we affirm that LGBTQA+ people on our campus, and in particular, our students, are perfect and whole and complete exactly as they are. And we celebrate, affirm and empower them.”<br> <br> “We are a resource center, so we're kind of that middle person,” assistant director Oprah Jrenal adds. “Jesse has done a great job of making connections across campus. When a student comes in and they're like, ‘This thing happened,’ Jesse is able to go through the Rolodex of people they know and say, ‘Oh, I can connect you to this human in that college who can support you with making the choice on that or to figure out how to fix that.’<br> <br> “That's why it's so important that we do all the workshops and trainings and keep our website up to date with a glossary of terminology so that folks who are just sitting in their offices can go, ‘Gee, I heard this word today. What does that even mean?’ Our website has so many resources on it, so if folks really don't want to talk to a human, they can always go to our website and explore more about our community.”<br> <br> Beal says “the easiest way for faculty and staff to engage with our center is to either attend one of our trainings or workshops or to bring us in for consultation. For students, I think the easiest way to engage is to start with social media like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and our website. Or come to one of our many events and programs.”<br> <br> Beal and Jrenal explain the importance of pronouns.<br> <br> “Pronouns are words that we use in place of your name,” Beal says. “Most people have pronouns that they expect people to use for them when they're not in the room, right? The most common ones are the he series, he, him, his, or the