Catching Up With: Queer Union
It’s still only a month in the school year, so we sat down with student groups across campus to get the deets on upcoming events, how to join, and what they’re tackling this semester. Editor-in-Chief Kyla Bills sat down with Amina, the President of Queer Union, to talk to about the club’s plans and maintaining student activism on a decentralized campus.
NYU Local: So, just introduce us to Queer Union. Who are you as a group?
QU: Our role within the clubs associated with the LGBTQ Center is we’re the outreach and activism group. We focus on the intersection between current activism movements and — I don’t want to say putting a queer lens on it, but it’s that kind of idea — using our experiences as members of the LGBTQ community to inform our activism. Which is very interesting. SHADES, which is a group for POC who are also LGBTQ, does a lot of that. There’s some crossover there.
We’re very focused on what we can do to support other causes, what can we do to support other activist groups at NYU and stuff like that. We actually, just before the semester started, we did a meeting with people from a couple other activism groups like SLAM, a couple environmental groups and we talked about how we can do outreach and talk and connect. There’s not one specific thing we do — I could read you our very cheesy Facebook “About Us” — but if you’re an activist, you’re part of the LGBTQ community and you want to take a very active role in activism and talking about current things going on in the community that’s the space that Queer Union occupies.
NYU Local: What are groups you guys have been working with lately?
QU: In the past two years, to my knowledge, we’ve worked the Students of Solidarity movement, we do a lot with NYU Divest, we’ve participated in almost all of the student action of last semester — we had, if not a ton of us, a couple representatives there. We’ve also done a lot with the Black Lives Matter movement, obviously there isn’t a Black Lives Matter “club” at NYU but through a lot of the things that go on at CMEP we end up working with them. We do a lot work outside of NYU too. In the past we’ve done a Banned Blood Drive while the NYU Blood Drive is going on to talk about how if you have a penis and you’ve had sex with someone with a penis then you can’t donate blood, and you can’t donate blood if you’re going through certain transition therapies. We supported IEC a lot last year. If someone invites us to come, or if we know someone, or have cross-over, we tend to at least bring it into club discussion.
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NYU Local: I feel that despite having such a decentralized campus, the student activism at NYU is all very close-knit.
QU: That’s super true. We have this thing called the Students in Solidarity Coalition — that might be the wrong name, but something like that — essentially once every month or so we all get together and hang out and discuss things that are going on in each of our groups and what’s going on on-campus. It allows you to talk with people and see what’s going on in other groups because it’s difficult to go to every group’s meeting
NYU Local: Where do you feel you guys stand both with the administration at NYU and within the community?
QU: So, community-wise we have a pretty strong connection. I mean if you’re not part of the LGBTQ community or an ally or interested in it in any way, it’s not going to be like super tight-knit. We’ve never had any active anger or hatred towards us.
Faculty and administration-wise it kind of goes back and forth, obviously our advisors are great and everyone at the LGBTQ Center is really great, we have a wonderful relationship with CMEP. Often what happens is when we work with another group and they’re trying to get something pushed up to the administration we end up on the student group’s side against the administration. It’s never like the administrators are like “You can’t do this, you’re completely in the wrong!” but if they’re having an issue. Like, with Divest, last semester we were working with Divest and the Queer Union people working with Divest were considered to be on their side. We haven’t asked anything big of the administration in the past… We started working to get a gender neutral bathroom map with other members of the LGBTQ center. We’re trying to ensure there’s at least one gender neutral bathroom in every building and NYU has been very accommodating about that.
NYU Local: What are you guys moving towards in the next few months?
QU: We meet at four to five PM on Fridays, that’s my plug! We don’t have anything specific and concrete as the agenda for this semester, but what I’d personally like to do is build a better rapport outside of people in our club or people in the clubs we work with. I’d love to have some kind of relationship with the whole community at NYU. I would love to increase our outreach. We are going to continue in supporting other groups with their goals this semester, there will definitely be outreach events we will be doing.
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[Image via NYU.]
