Jesse Beal:
Why? Why do I care about mental health? Well, because I’ve been running student facing resource centers for the past decade, right. And I have sat with students in some incredibly dark times, and I’ve worked with administrators to change these policies, to set up systems, to make our campuses more navigable, less violent, less harmful. And you know, sometimes you’re successful and sometimes you’re not, but as practitioners, what we are always able to do is just be there and be present and be that, you know, staff member in a particular student’s life who believes them when they tell you who they are.

Heather Shea:
Welcome to Student Affairs Now. The online learning community for student affairs educators. I am your host, Heather Shea. Today we are learning about a recent collaboration between the JED Foundation and the consortium of higher education LGBT resource center professionals resulting in a groundbreaking report and resource guide for high school, college, and university administrators to better support the mental health of the LGBTQIA2S+ students in their schools or on their campuses. The report is called the proud and thriving report and framework the mental health of LGBTQ plus high school, college, and university students. I am thrilled to have three individuals who helped create the report here today to share this important work on our podcast. Student Affairs Now is the premier podcast and learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of high education and student affairs, we hope you’ll find these conversations, make a contribution to the field and are restorative to the profession.

Heather Shea:
We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find us at studentaffairsnow.com on YouTube or anywhere you listen to podcasts. Today’s episode is sponsored by Colorado State University Online, which is now offering a fully online master of science degree. In student affairs, this program will help you gain the professional competencies, knowledge and experience to succeed as a higher education administrator. You will earn the same master’s degree and learn from the same faculty as CSU on campus. Students learn more at online.colostate.edu. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Heather Shea, my pronouns are she her and hers and I am broadcasting from East Lansing, Michigan on the campus of Michigan State University, where I serve as the director of women’s student services and interim director of the gender and sexuality campus center. I am also an affiliate faculty member in the MSU student affairs administration master’s program, Michigan State University my home campus occupies the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi peoples the university resides on land seated in the 1819 treaty of Saginaw. Thank you so much to the three of you for joining me today on the podcast. I am thrilled to be able to talk about this important report and share this with our audience. Can we begin by each of you telling us a little bit about your pathway into the work that you do and maybe a bit about how you got involved with this project. And I’m gonna start with you Jesse.

Jesse Beal:
Great. Hi Heather, I’m really excited to be here with you. It’s fun to find little ways we can still connect. So hi folks. My name is Jesse Beal I use they them pronouns. I’m currently the associate director for the spectrum center at the University of Michigan. We are currently celebrating our 50th Anniversary which is a very big deal. We are the first LGBTQIA2S+ center in the country. My previous role was as the director of the gender and sexuality campus that are at Michigan State University which is where I know Heather from. But I am here in my role as the external coordinator for the consortium of higher education, LGBT resource professionals. The consortium has long been my professional home wing work on, on campuses to support LGBTQIA2S+ populations. So I think I’ll stop there and kick it over to my friend, Chris.

Chris Woods:
Hi everybody. I’m Chris Woods. I use him his pronouns. I serve currently as the director of the NYU LGBTQ plus center, which is one of a number of hubs within the office of global inclusion diversity and strategic innovation, which is the university’s primary area area of focus on global inclusion, diversity equity belonging and access. My kind of career to this point has included a long stint or long involvement with the consortium of higher education LGBT or resource professionals, which is why I’m here. I primarily work with Sofia to kind of set up the partnership between JED and the consortium and was a part of the project throughout. I was the former internal coordinator for the consortium. In terms of my career, I’ve been in LGBTQ+ higher education work for what feels like my whole life from being an undergraduate student worker at the NYU LGBTQ+ center to having my first full-time job be here at the same center to now being the director. I’ve worked at jobs in between, but it’s been really special to be at a center and see it’s kind of evolution in my tenure and we’re actually celebrating our 25th. So also another momentous time, not in nearly as long as 50, but I’m really glad to be here. And thank you for having me.

Heather Shea:
Thank you so much for being here. Sofia welcome

Sofia B. Pertuz:
I’m Sofia B. Pertuz and my pronouns are she her hers, and I am very privileged to have worked with the consortium on this project. I’m a diversity equity inclusion professional with over 25 years. I started out in higher education than the nonprofit world, and now I’m in corporate. So while working on the proud and thriving project, I served as the chief diversity and inclusion officer and senior advisor at the JED Foundation, a nonprofit that protects the emotional health and prevents suicide for young people, which will share more. But I currently serve as managing director for diversity equity and inclusion at Billy Jean King Enterprises, which is an investment consulting and marketing firm that puts Billy Jean King’s philosophy and brand value at work capitalizing on her long standing advocacy for equality, so that I’m thrilled to be here. And I can’t wait to talk more about the proud and thriving project.

Heather Shea:
Yes. And we will absolutely share a link to the report in our show notes today. But before we divide, dive into that content, I would love to have our audience know a little bit more about the organizations and this important work that you do. So Sofia, can we stay with you for a moment and you tell us a little bit more about the JED Foundation.

Sofia B. Pertuz:
Sure. the JED Foundation is a nonprofit organization. Like I said before that protects the emotional health and prevents suicide for our nation’s teens and young adults giving them skills and the support they need to thrive just today, but tomorrow. And we do that by partnering with high schools, colleges to strengthen their mental health, substance misuse and suicide prevention programs, and systems. Many of you might be familiar with the JED campus program or JED fundamentals, the newest program supporting higher education institutions, or you might have heard us on other new programs, how high school JED high school. So we work closely with administrators educators and counselors to really think about how to best support and create comprehensive systems where any student can go to anyone to really be supported in their mental health struggles. So

Heather Shea:
Great. One of the things that we asked and that this is not on our, our question list, but what does JED stand for? And it’s not an acronym, correct?

Sofia B. Pertuz:
No, JED is actually the son of the founders who JED Sato who died by suicide when he was a, a college student. So the, the parents did create a, the organization to be of higher education. And just to find out more about what can colleges do to strengthen their systems and really not let anyone fall through the cracks.

Heather Shea:
Great. Thank you so much for sharing that.

Sofia B. Pertuz:
And I just, Donna and Phil Sato, it’s like, I know they, their names are right at the top of mind, but Donna and Phil Sato are the founders. And, you know, they’re very involved in the organization and wanted to make sure that no one suffered like they did as, as parents to, to really know that colleges are looking out for their young people.

Heather Shea:
Great. Jesse, tell us a little bit about the consortium.

Jesse Beal:
Sure. So the consortium of higher education resource professionals is a members based organization that is, can dedicated to serving and supporting all LGBTQA+ members, everybody, everybody at a university. But basically we serve and support folks who are doing LGBTQA+ inclusion work on campuses, right? And so we are actually a nonprofit and we are a volunteer run organization. We do a lot around membership engagement. We do a lot around education and professional development. One of, I think the most important things we do is we provide social and community support spaces for folks who are working on campuses. So we often are the helpers, right? We’re the folks who are supporting LGBTQIA2S+ student faculty and staff as they navigate campus. And that can be tremendously hard, especially as many of our offices, our offices of one. Right. and so we are there for each other. And I think for me, that is the most rewarding part of the consortium is knowing that you are never fully alone in the work, because there are people across the country who are invested in the liberation of LGBTQA+ people as well. Chris, you have been a member of the consortium, as we say in the south, since God was a child. It’s true. Not entirely, but anything you wanna add that I may have left behind?

Chris Woods:
Not much. I mean, it’s also been a major professional home, Jesse and I have known each other really long time. But yeah, it’s been my professional home in many ways since I was an undergrad student being mentored by amazing folks doing the work across the country. I think another thing that we do as an organization that I’m really proud of is guiding documents, like the one that we partnered with JED on that outline a number of best practices for practice policy inclusive systems and things like that. So that’s another area of, I think, pride for the consortium of mine. Yeah, that’s a great organization.

Jesse Beal:
I totally agree, Chris, thank you so much for adding that.

Heather Shea:
Great. Yes. I feel like both of your organizations are alive and well at MSU. And so thank you for all the work that you’re doing to support both my work as well as the, the work of other administrators at MSU too. So talk a little bit about how this collaboration came to be between the two organizations Sofia talk a little bit about who supported this work who contributed and maybe a bit about how you gathered data. So it’s a whole long list of things, so I’ll let you start.

Sofia B. Pertuz:
Okay. No problem. All, so three years ago, I came to JED and one of the first projects that I worked on was the equity and mental health framework, which the JED Foundation had worked on with the state fund. And that was geared towards supporting the mental health of students of color on college campuses. So I remember so many schools found it really helpful to have some actionable advice and recommendations. But I felt like we’re still missing the LGBTQ+ student population and looking at, we know that there’s intersection identities, but I thought that there should be a dedicated set of recommendations and research done. So we started even internally, it was great to have the support of our CEO John MCee and he’s like, let’s, let’s go ahead and see who you can get and gather to start the conversation.

Sofia B. Pertuz:
And there were internal folks at the JED Foundation who just were really supportive. And the, one of the first people that I reached out to was Dr. Marin Greathouse, who at the time was at the Tyler Clemente center and had worked on a white paper where there was data that was put together for the first time, from all types of higher education. We collect a lot of data in higher ed, but sometimes synthesizing it and pulling it together is, is the key. And then the next part is the action. So she was involved early on. University professor, Dr. Genevive Weber was also very supportive. She works with Sue Rankin and associates also. So we talked about how climate survey sometimes has info. So how do you again, bring that together? And of course, we reached out to Chris Woods who at the time was one of the coordinators at the consortium of higher ed LGBT source professionals.

Sofia B. Pertuz:
And we thought, okay, this is a group that is specifically working through things with students and being supportive. And we’re hoping that this is the group that not only knows the data knows the information, but also knows what kind of resources they need so that when we did put together the recommendations they can, they can chime in. So we had a few folks there. I already mentioned Chris, you meet him today. And then Jesse Beal. We wanna make sure we say everyone’s names and acknowledge because there was a lot of work and review that went into it. Another group that funded the project. And we were so excited about that about a year ago was the upswing fund for adolescent and to help who provided major funding for this project.

Sofia B. Pertuz:
And then we had the healthy minds network over at the University of Michigan, Dr. Sarah Kein Lipson and Dr. Saha Jo, who both were looking at the data five years worth of collected data from the healthy mind study. So we, we looked everywhere and then we had conducted some of our own research have to acknowledge Dr. Amy Green at the Trevor project who helped us with the survey part of this decision analyst was the, the firm that got the survey out. We wanted a survey students. We wanted a survey administrators and mental health professionals. So we were able to get a cross section of both. And we did focus groups, and a few others helped us with the focus groups. And then two last people moment mentioned as part of this project. she’s the CEO of the Batista consulting services who helped us really keep this project together and, and brought her knowledge of overall higher resources that really pulled everything together for us.

Sofia B. Pertuz:
And then finally, I have to acknowledge the primary author of all of our all of our publications, Dr. Marin Gray started our literature reviews and worked extensively on them. We have two different ones but Dr. Reese Kelly, who is the CEO and founder of embodied values really brought the heart and soul to the, the full document and brought a lot of data analysis and synthesized it into something that is very readable, very easy to relate to, and hopefully a great resource that people can go to over and over. And it’s all on a website, which I’m sure you’ll post as part of this podcast. And I already mentioned the, the surveys, the focus groups, and then the, and which were collected between may and June of this year. So we were able to capture some of the angst and, and issues from being home and being in hybrid situations and being remote and what stress additional stressors that that caused. So it was great. And the healthy mind study from the past five years. So that was a long answer, but it was pretty extensive and a lot of people involved. And I hope I didn’t forget anybody, but it, it was truly a, a collaborative effort for sure.

Heather Shea:
Wow, I am, I am absolutely blown away. That is definitely like a who’s who list. And I will also say incredibly quick turnaround to gather data in may and June and produce a document of this nature. I really hope that this podcast helps get the word out even further about this really important resource. So thank you so much for the dedicated of, of all the people who you named, but specifically from the three of you too. So one of the things that I, as a scholar and as a, a practitioner, I love seeing, you know, resources grounded in the literature. And so Jesse, could you talk a little bit about that process of gathering literature? You know, why are there two separate literature reviews? And then we’ll get into a little bit of the background and kind of what that literature consisted of, but tell us a little bit about the two bodies of literature that you all drew upon.

Jesse Beal:
Yeah, absolutely. So I didn’t mention this earlier, but I’m also a PhD student in the higher adult and lifelong education program at Michigan State University. And so what, there’s two literature reviews, which for me, as someone who studies LGBTQA2S+ folks in higher education, it’s just like amazing. Right, right. Exactly. Like it’s, it’s like they threw me a party, but it’s in two separate at literature use. Right. I’m was so thrilled when they were released. And I, we do really have to give so much of the credit to Dr. Marin and Dr. Reese Kelly they were incredible in this process and pulling all of this information together. So we have two separate literature review. The first one is for LGBTQ+ folks. Right. And the second one is for trans nonbinary identities.

Jesse Beal:
Now, part of the reason why there’s a division of lit the literature reviews is because there’s a division in the literature, right. Where one is about sexuality and the other one is about gender. And we tend to think about LGBTQA2S+ identities as being monolithic, but there is no one story of what it is to be or trans where there’s a ton of variation, of course, across lines of race and class and disability, but also within our communities. Right. within the acronym, if you will. Right. and so the first literature review was very much focused on sexual identities, right? So what it means to have, and hold a sexual identity, that’s considered to be marginalized, right. That is marginalized within our school systems within higher education. Right. And the second one really focused on trans and non-binary folks. Was there anything you wanted to add to this? Okay. Well, thank you, Chris likes to compliment me, which makes us very, very good friends. right.

Heather Shea:
I love it. So Sofia, tell us a little bit about some of the highlights and a bit of the, about the background the literature, in which, in, in which this is grounded and some of the specific risk factors that you all named.

Sofia B. Pertuz:
I would say there’s lots of really great scholars that are working on this. And, and just like Jesse said, it’s all in different places. So we, we knew we had to bring in mental health, we need bring in higher education retention, all the different things that, you know, people who are educators are worried about are students adjusting our students, able to be their full selves and show up authentically. So we drew from different places to bring it all together. So that’s why there’s two very long literature views. And, but I think anyone who is saying, I don’t have the info, I don’t know the language. Oh, I don’t know how to continue to find the info has zero. Excuse. If they go to the crowd and thriving framework website, there’s different links there. And in the links, even within the, both the two frameworks, I’m sorry, the two literature reviews and the framework are even more readings within and names of scholars who are, who are working really hard to educate everyone about, about these important topics.

Sofia B. Pertuz:
So that’s the data and how we bring that together. I won’t bore you with that, but I do wanna talk about what brought us to the conversation in the first place. And they were the risk factors. We wanna make sure that we’re addressing the issues so that we on that’s the deficit model first is like, what was wrong? What are the issues? And we’re hoping to end on a high note and what are the protective factors. We also found those as well, but I’ll start with some of the risk factors. And they were things like, so for trans and non-binary students internalized CIS sexism. And we introduced language in this report that I hope will enlighten folks to really rethink some of the ideas around the way we use words. And one of the first sections is a note about language, which Dr. Reese Kelly created. And I think it’s brilliant. So please, if you can download and look at that it, it’s a great primer lack of identity, pride, looking at ideas of passing and the way that the external factor of make us not show up as our full selves and share non-discrimination policies that don’t specifically call out and name sexuality and gender ideas about bullying and how that shows up gender, not having gender segregated facilities. So for example, restrooms that are well labeled locker rooms and, housing choices for, for young people who are just trying to figure things out. I think the more expanded the choices are the more people don’t have to choose and don’t have to, it doesn’t have to be a conflicting issues. So some of those risk factors not easy to solve, but they’re definitely there. And we know that they’re a struggle for, for young people for overall LGBTQ+ students.

Sofia B. Pertuz:
We found very similar things in internalized heterosexism, mono sexism not finding the examples of the themselves in the classroom. So faculty and curriculum that just excludes and does not have a full sense of everybody who is, is part of the campus community. So those are a few, there’s so many lack of resources, obviously staff and administrators and mental health practitioners who do not have the knowledge, the language or the training that one was very clear, the data for us. And that was self-reported some of the practitioners who are like, I just don’t know the info. I have no idea. So those are definitely some of the risk factors and barriers to engaging with others and, and invisibility just not seen themselves on campuses. So those are a few there’s so much more, but, I thought I would just give some highlights

Heather Shea:
Jesse or Chris, any that you wanna specifically raise up or, or highlight as important for you in your work?

Jesse Beal:
Yeah. I think, you know, these risk factors, as Sofia said, are exactly what got us into this. Right? When Chris, when I joined the consortium board, Chris was the person who was the point person on this project. And he was like, you know, Jesse, this is what you care about. This is your stuff you care about mental health, like, please join us. Right. and well, why do I care about mental health? Well, because I’ve been running student facing resource centers for the past decade, right. And I have sat with students in some incredibly dark times, and I’ve worked with administrators to change these policies, to set up systems, to make our campuses more navigable, less violent, less harmful. And you know, sometimes you’re successful and sometimes you’re not, but as practitioners, what we are always able to do is just be there and be present and be that, you know, staff member in a particular student’s life who believes them when they tell you who they are, right.

Jesse Beal:
Who takes care of them in the ways that we’re able to, like, if it’s feeding them at an event right. Or bringing their favorite speaker, right. You know, who trusts them, who honors them, who uses the right name and pronouns for them, you know, who tries and shows up and shows up and shows up. And I’m really lucky, Chris, I’m sure this is true for you as well. But, you know, I have students who were in high levels of distress around their mental health, who I, you know, worked with and supported who are still, you know, in my day to day life, 10 years later. Right. that we still are close because we went through something together and I got to be the person who moved with them through that dark, dark space. Right. That hard, hard space rather to something else. Right. So I just, I really wanna acknowledge, you know, so the work that Sofia has done in this project too, because she’s right. Like we came to this work because we sincerely want to change the state of mental health for LGBTQA+ youth and young adults. We wanna see a change happen here because LGBTQ resource center directors and staff are doing suicide prevention work every day, and we need some help from the rest of the institution. Right. Chris, anything you’d add to that?

Chris Woods:
Yeah. I mean, I think what the risk factors highlight or illuminate is oftentimes I think there’s a tendency historically. There’s an, a tendency in mental health work to pathologize LGBTQ plus communities and people. Right. We know this or if you don’t know this, you gotta look that up. There’s a rich and long unfortunate history of mental health work pathologizing LGBTQ plus communities. And I think these risk factors help to illuminate the many, many ways that these risk factors are not in individual, their risk factors of the social and cultural environments and the institutional environments that these students live in and have to operate within that increase or risk to their mental health and wellbeing. And so I think what I appreciated about this project was helping to kind of unearth and make really explicit. Some of these very things that are actually solvable in many ways are solvable some may, maybe not so much, right. Are we gonna transform or shift heterosexism, and CIS sexism today, maybe a big task, but can we change a form? Can we change a structure? Can we change a system, a policy, a practice, a resource that we can do. Right. And so I think it, for me, it helped illuminate kind of, kind of just how the risk, how much the risk factors are really rooted in things that are external to these students that apply a lot of pressure to their kind of day to day navigation and like world experience.

Jesse Beal:
What Chris said just now is like so valuable, right? It is so, so good because so often when we talk about how hard it is for LGBTQA+ students to navigate K through 12 or higher education systems, the response is something like, well, they just need to be more resilient. We need them to toughen up a bit. And that’s not actually the answer like our LGBTQ I a two plus students are tough. Right? They have been through it being authentically yourself in high schools today is not any easier than when I was in high school. Right. They’re tough. And they are doing what they need to do to live. Right. And it’s the systems, right? This is an organizational institutional structural ideological problem. And yes, we can all intervene on the individual level to make change, but there’s also systems level change. And I really appreciate Chris, you naming that specifically, cuz that is something that differentiates this project from other or LGBTQA+ mental health projects. Right. because the, the problem is not located in this report with our students, it’s located within the system. And that is so valuable. So I basically just re-said everything that Chris said with a whole lot more SOS and ums, but I just wanted to highlight that yes, Chris is correct.

Sofia B. Pertuz:
Some data to this, you know, back to the idea of the issues are not with the students themselves, they’re they’re students, they’re humans, they’re people that need help. And sometimes you might hear somebody say, well, why don’t they just get help? Go ahead and go. Well, our study found that three and four LGBTQ plus students reported that they wanted to see a professional for counseling in the past six months, 90% are likely to go, but couldn’t find any. And then 67% said they had used therapy before. So it’s not a group that is shy about getting help. It’s just the help that’s available is not the culturally compet help that they need. So we, and we found that data too, 40% of counselors and administrators said they didn’t have adequate training and didn’t have the information nearly half said that they had not had any, did not feel at all skilled to be helpful to LGBTQ plus students. So to, to be able to get that information people to admit, I don’t have what it, the, the information I don’t have the training. That’s great that we got that, but it’s also concerning that we got that because that means that we have some work to do.

Heather Shea:
Yeah. But it’s within our control potentially. Right. And this is what I love about this. I mean, maybe right. The systems level what are the levers that we can actually affect change around? And I think within our campuses, we, we do have some power. And so that’s the other part that I really loved about what you said, Chris, as far as you know, it’s not fixing students, it’s fixing our institutions. So Chris, I wanna turn to you as a director of a resource center. We’re gonna talk about kind of within the resource center space, how do you intend or see this report being used? And then we’re gonna look at it more broadly at the institutional level. So what have you experienced and what do you hope that this adds to your ability to influence that change?

Chris Woods:
Oh Lord. Yes. I’ve experienced a lot in this topic. I think, you know Jesse, I think I appreciate you sharing about like holding space for students. I can’t tell you the amount of times as a director of a center, just to sit with a student in severe distress who have tried their hardest to seek out resources and don’t know where to go or who to turn to. And then when resources like these exist and hopefully they do, and they don’t exist, unfortunately at all colleges or university campuses, but when they do, they can serve as a safety net for many students. But you know, the job of mental health work or even the job of really thinking about a person’s holistic wellbeing being isn’t cannot live within a center, can’t even live within counseling, right. Or mental health professions. It’s really undertaking of an entire institution, really a society, right.

Chris Woods:
To really contend with the risks that we’re talking about and then figure out solutions that could support people in their day to day experience. And so I think for me, this, the just really reaffirmed everything that I experience every day in this work and have been experiencing for the past 10 years. And, you know, I think it, what I appreciate is that it also elevates kind of what I, I see all the time and hopefully elevates it to such a way that it can really reach the eyes or the perspectives of senior leaders in higher education work. As well as senior leaders in K through 12 education, I’m thinking policy makers, you know, it has the, it has the potential to really reach those who have the, the power to influence change in ways that sometimes even at a sensor like ours we may not have that agency, thankfully in my role, we have quite a bit of influence since we report directly to the president as an organization it really helps us to be able to really leverage our positional location at the institution to be able to kind of inform policies, practices, and system changes, but that’s not necessarily what everyone else experiences.

Chris Woods:
So I’m hopeful that it really can be it could really have folks rally around something really to understand issues on a national scale. And then hopefully begin to imagine what are the opportunities higher education has to support LGBTQ plus students and their whole wellbeing. Right. I think sometimes folks forget that wellness is not just limited to just mental health, right? It’s really inclusive of, you know, for example a lot of the work that I’ve been doing on our campus is focused on how to address misgendering and deadnaming that happens on campus, which is one of the, a number of risk factors that exist specifically for trans and non-binary students and their mental health. And so in our work here on campus, we’ve been trying to reduce that number through systems, change, policy changes, and it’s required collaboration with partners across the institution.

Chris Woods:
And actually very often doesn’t include our mental health staff. Right. And so, but imagine a world in which students are being misgendered at a rate of zero, like zero to very few cases or instances how much that might improve their own sense of self on a college campus, the ways in which they feel seen, heard understood in the ways that they identify. Right. I think there’s so much opportunity there that we have to really inform or shift a person’s experience. Right. So I think for me, I think there’s such opportunity for higher education institutions to improve or to shift to imagine, you know, protective factors that can help LGBTQ plus students thrive to thrive in the realities that our LGBTQ plus students are coming into college. At earlier earlier ages already having a really strong sense of themselves. Some maybe not depending on various cultural contexts, but every day I meet students who have stronger knowledges of what pronouns are who know what their pronouns are, how to address misgendering. What’s the current terminology and lingo. I feel like there’s just so many students know so much about the community and about themselves. And we have some catching up to do in higher ed. So I think this, this report I think is provides a really great opportunity to start to figure out how do we advance?

Heather Shea:
So as we were prepping for today’s episode, Jesse, you said some really brilliant things about where centers live in institutions and the ways to influence change. I wanna give you that space now because the way you said it earlier was like so vital that we need to be thinking about positioning our centers and Chris reporting to the president. Oh, my word.

Chris Woods:
Not directly, I’ll add that part. Not directly. So I report to a senior vice president for global inclusion. And who’s amazing who reports to the president, but organizationally yeah. We’re with an office of the president.

Heather Shea:
Wow.

Jesse Beal:
So I can try and recreate what I brilliantly said earlier. Your words, not mine. But I hope Sofia and Chris will jump in if I don’t quite get it. I talking about organizational factors in higher education. I think it’s very interesting how LGBTQA+ resources are housed and how different that is depending on what, like institutional context they are located in. Right. whether it’s a small liberal arts college or a big 10 university, or, you know HBCU right. Like very different locations. Right. so we are often not placed in places to do institution facing work though, right. Unless we are in a position like Chris’s office we’re often placed under student affairs or student life, student services some iteration of that kind of umbrella which comes with it in the very first part of its student.

Jesse Beal:
Right. and our centers often don’t just serve students, even though our mission may be explicitly to serve students because we tend not to have an institution facing counterpart that is doing institutional change work. We tend to be serving all people, which I found in my last role, at MSU was often serving the parents of GT Q a plus teenagers and you know, children, right. Because they’d come to a workshop or training and be like, Jesse, my kid is trans, what do I do? And I’m like, well, I can’t say you do not fall within the scope of our mission. No, that’s another human I’m gonna support them. Right. but we are placed in ways that don’t necessarily allow for all of us to be able to do the work. Right. And often our centers are one person, two person, three person offices, which to do all of the LGBTQA+ inclusion work is impossible.

Jesse Beal:
Right. It, we are structured to fail. Right. so we don’t have a seat in the table. Right. We’re under resourced. Right. And we’re not able to affect the change we need to make on behalf of the populations that we purportedly serve. Right. we cannot also at the same time funnel, all LGBTQ, everything through this one person shop of an LGBTQA+ center. Right. so, you know, we are in a little bit of an organizational quandary, where do we belong? How are we most effectively positioned? Should we be under chief diversity officer or which is similar to what Chris has on his campus, right. Do we belong in student affairs? Do institutional diversity offices need to do more to, to be supportive of LGBTQA +communities? I think the last one is yes. Yes. The rest of them always think on, but the last one is yes. And Sofia agrees with me.

Sofia B. Pertuz:
I agree with you, you know, as a, as a diversity and inclusion professional, that’s working with consulting with organizations, I’m finding that people’s expectations are higher for their own institutions. So I know that this study was specifically about serving students, but I am a wholehearted as a student affairs, professional faculty member. I wholeheartedly believe that institutions need to also take care of our staff and faculty and administrators, because how can they possibly take care of their students if they don’t feel affirmed? If they have to sit in spaces where I will tell you one story. And I, I won’t say where I have a friend who is a member of the LGBTQ plus community who was sitting in a meeting strategizing around student support. So it was a great topic, but the president said, oh, I think we’re, we’re good there with LGBTQ plus, right?

Sofia B. Pertuz:
I mean, everyone’s gay these days. Just things like that. Like, we’re good. We’re, we’re in a good place. We are, we have arrived. And I’m thinking if that’s true, then why do we have the most legislation that our anti-trans that has come out in the last year than ever? So, no, we are not there. No, we don’t have all the info. And yes, we do to support everyone that supports our students so that our students can find places to be, be more affirmed and supported. So it’s like a cycle and it’s a full, comprehensive back to the JED Foundation’s thought process on everyone needs to be able to provide that support so that students can have somewhere to go on campus and know it cannot be one place for one center. And it can’t only be the counseling center either, but we can only do that if everyone is educated and everyone has the, the resources and support that they need off my soapbox now, I just I’m. So passion really well.

Jesse Beal:
I really liked your soapbox. It was a good soapbox.

Heather Shea:
Agreed, agreed. Anytime you wanna jump up there. I am absolutely blown away. And I really think that the key here is this idea that it’s everybody’s responsibility. So let’s talk a little bit about some of the protective factors, because if our environments are CIS sexist, heterosexist, monosexist, what types of protections should we be putting in place to buffer against and reduce the psychological distress? I’m just gonna throw this out to any of the three of you because we didn’t identify a key P person direct it to, so who would like to take this one? What are the protective factors? We talked about some of them, but.

Chris Woods:
I mean I could start this very, oh go no,

Jesse Beal:
Go ahead. No, you go ahead. Let’s let’s be

Chris Woods:
I mean this big picture you’ll see that it’s divided under and questioning and trans and non-binary protective factors, but if you really thought a little bit even within that, there really you’ll see protective factors that are more individual based meaning things that we can cultivate within students to be able to have them be, to reduce the risk that they have around their mental health. So for example, things like self-compassion and a good sense of, of like exercise, cognitive flexibility, things like that. And then there’s also community focused protective factors, things like having affirming environments, having affirming communities, having spaces that with people and mentors that reflect them and their identities and communities. And then there’s a vast majority of the protected factors are actually institutional, right? So things that, so the kind of the asset based version of what Sofia mentioned earlier, which are things like having gender inclusive facilities, having a policy that aligns pronouns and chosen name what happens when people experience harassment or violence can do they have resources for that that are clearly outlined for reporting and things like that.

Chris Woods:
So anyways, I think those are kind of the, kind of the buckets, you know, how I understood the report is individual community focused and then institutional.

Jesse Beal:
Chris, I love everything you just said. I only wanna add two things. And the one is one of the parts of the report that really stuck out to me was having a negative self perception, right, as being one, a risk factor and then a possible, you know, a protective factor being like, you know, developing a more positive association and more pride in your identity. Right. And one of the best things about JED and this, this particular project is that it took what we already know right. As practitioners and it gave it to us in data. Right. And so we’re like, yes, that’s true. And I remember when I learned that as a practitioner, right. I remember when I started changing the way I talked about my identities, because my students deserved to have a practitioner with them who loved us. Right.

Jesse Beal:
That like part of my practice, as you know, an LGBTQA+ resource center staff person was to love our communities, not an exclusion of other communities. Right. But to be completely 100% for LGBTQA+ communities to be unabashedly in love with us. Right. And for me like that, I remember learning that and how that was a shift for me in how I approached the work. Right. And the self-work that it took as a practitioner to be able to love everything that we are even the hard parts. Right. and I really that part like helping our students thrive is about being them, being able to realize joy, right. And imagine joy in their life, right. To imagine a future where their identities exist. And some of that is because of the adults and they are adults too, in our case, not the K through 12, mostly, but like in the students that Chris and I serve are mostly adults, right.

Jesse Beal:
As well, but older adults in their life who are and trans and non-binary and poly and pan and all of the identities of the world and just living lives right. And loving themselves and our communities as an act of justice. Right. If we wanna go towards Cornell, west, right. Loving us in public. Right. and that’s so important. That’s so, so important. The second thing I wanna say, and this is completely different, right? Like, so we’re gonna a little little left turn here is institutions. And this comes out in the report too, but institutions have got to do a job of collecting demographic information on LGBTQA+ plus populations, right. This shows up in student information systems. This impacts exactly what Chris is just saying around shows name, right. Because it’s these same or similar systems that feed into each other y’all data on LGBTQA+ populations is critical and it needs to be complete, accurate, and inclusive.

Jesse Beal:
And that means your, your gender categories cannot say male, female, other, or even male, female, non-binary it is 2021. It’s December of 2021. There are plenty of scholars out there who can help you figure out how to ask these questions in a way that communitites see themselves and recognize themselves in. Right. I’ll help you. I mean, I’ll charge you, but I’ll help you. I’m sure Christopher would love to charge you. Right. we’re here for it. But we have to get this data because we don’t, and it is an institutional in of community. We don’t even recognize that these communities exist. How are we gonna to serve them? The gall poll found that 16% of generation Z adults are LGBTQIA2S+. 16%. These are our students. We don’t know if they’re graduating. We don’t know if they are succeeding. We don’t know if they’re on probation. We don’t know. We don’t know because we don’t bother to ask. And there are ways in which we can protect that data and that information and ensure that we’re actually able to target these kinds of interventions, these kinds of protective factors, right? And while resource allocation is tied to numbers, gonna throw that out there, be really, really helpful to be able to name how many and queer trans students we have on our campuses. Because as long as we don’t know, we can pretend that they don’t exist.

Sofia B. Pertuz:
Yes. Can I challenge you on a national data perspective really quickly?

Jesse Beal:
You can, I’d love for you to.

Sofia B. Pertuz:
And maybe, you know, institutions are, I think sometimes a afraid cuz they’re like, I don’t know what words to use, what language or what labels, but there are studies that institutions have been participating in things like the chirp, the name them there’s so many. And that’s what Marion Dr. Marion tried to do with the Tyler Clemente center. Right. A white paper that says, okay, some of them just started collecting this data like the three or four years ago at the time. I can’t tell you how many now, but some of this data does exist if you’re willing to look at it. And, and that’s a pet peeve of mine in higher ed, where we collect a lot of info, a lot of data, we even do climate surveys to really figure out what’s going on. And then we put it on a shelf. When we find that it might be more expensive to challenging or just new, not in the top priority. And I’m gonna channel my Dr. Sean Harper where he wrote this I it out somewhere. But he wrote the please stop collecting climate survey data, and then just doing nothing with it. Cause there’s no point in doing that, just don’t do them. So there is data sometimes you’re right there. Isn’t when it comes to real student data, that’s a campus specific, but trend wise, there are, there is data.

Jesse Beal:
No, no, no, no, you are totally right. I’m specifically talking about institutional data sets, right? Yeah. And the ways in which gender and sexuality do, and frankly, do not get captured by our institutions. Right. So you are, you are totally correct. There are national data sets out there. I would to get a coffee with you and talk about how terribly they ask those demographic questions as well, because some of them are pretty terrible. But specific to institutions is where we run into, we run into harm, right? Because we have a student who’s not able to say I’m non-binary right. And then have that them represented within student access data, you know, in a disaggregated way. Right? Because we do are able to protect certain data sets, including data sets related to disability. And as a person with disabilities, I know that those identities are protected right. In data sets that involve me. Right. It could be the same. And that’s not to say being queer and trans is disability because it isn’t, but it is something that does need to be protected. So there is no faculty member or administrator who can say, I would like a list of all of the queer and trans students, because that is a different kind of violence that we need to make sure doesn’t happen. So yes. So I agree, Sofia completely. Yes.

Heather Shea:
So Jesse, you’ve, you’ve jumped into a conversation, you know, our kind of our next piece, which is recommendations, which is great actually, because I want you to, in addition to talking about data, what are in, in the framework and in the document, it really breaks down the recommendations by these audiences. And I’d love for you to talk more about some of the specific, the recommendation beyond collecting and using data because, oh my gosh, that would tell us so much about what our students on our campuses are experiencing summarize kind of what that looks like at the institutional level. Other, other recommendations for institutions.

Jesse Beal:
Sure. I think what Sofia said earlier about us actually getting data that showed that people really feel like they don’t know enough is so important, right? That they don’t have enough knowledge on LGBTQA+ communities to do this job well to serve these communities. One of the most simple things that we can do at an institutional level is provide education, right? Access to education, around LGBTQA+ identities to topics themes ways to implement LGBTQA+ identities in the curriculum. We’ve already talked a lot about chosen meeting and pronouns. Again, curriculum is super important. It’s important for schools to support openly LGBTQA+ faculties, staff, administrators, right? Like it’s really hard to be that non-binary administrator, who’s sitting with a student saying, who’s saying our, you know, preferred name policy is terrible. And I’m like, yeah, you’re telling me.

Jesse Beal:
Right. You know, cause I know too, right. I’m experiencing it at a different level, but I also have that experience collecting exam, update policies and procedures. If y’all still have policy documentation that uses she, or he y’all come on with it, they is here. It is here to stay. It is also grammatically correct or grammatical, which is the grammatical way of saying that anyway resource program center’s offices, department roles in K through 12, you’re not gonna usually have an LGBTQA+ resource center, but you may have a GSA. Right. What training, what resources are you providing or excuse me, Gay Straight Alliance. What training or resources are you providing for the staff who advise that organization? Right. reduce, remove barriers for seeking and accessing mental health and academic and support services. And high schools offer training serious to family members, guardian supporters, to help them better understand and support LGBTQA+ students. Right. working with families is incredibly important. I did some consulting work with one of the local high schools in Dewitt, the at, you know, close by Lansing. Right. You know, because we wanted to do an LGBTQIA+ 101 for parents because they need to know what was going on. Right. They wanted to better understand their kids. This is important. Parents can make a huge difference in the mental health outcomes of LGBTQA+ youth specifically, they tend to lower suicidal ideation rates quite a bit. So it’s important for us to be educating all levels.

Heather Shea:
That’s great. Chris, in the section, I want you to kind of speak more about is around how our recommendations are specifically outlined for folks who are mental health practitioners. So kind of taking an institutional level mental health practitioners, and then we’re gonna get to the individual level next. So what are the recommendations in the framework and report?

Chris Woods:
Sure. And I say this with a grain of salt, cuz I’m not a mental health professional. But based on the report, which included many mental health professionals who contributed to the process. But what I will say is one thing I think that consumptions be challenging before I mention any of this feedback is that many mental health professionals do not provide, get receives related to LGBTQ+ experience. And if they did, it may have been many, many years ago, it’s never ongoing. Right? So I think one recommendation is really a commitment not only on an individual level, but on an organizational level for counseling and wellness centers to really continue ongoing learning that talks about the evolution of language identities and of LGBTQ+ communities, specifically the intersectional lives of LGBTQ+ communities, I think ever like more and more. I hear from counseling staff as well as from students directly about, you know I identify as an LGBTQ+ person, but that experience is uniquely shaped by my cultural upbringing, my racial, ethnic background, my immigrant status, my religiosity and my faith background, which is a personal area of interest and passion, you know, things like that.

Chris Woods:
And so I think it’s really important to really think about the nuance of people’s experience and to develop, you know, do case studies and develop skills around how to hold space for people. And it’s okay to not know the answers. I think as a, and I say this for all student affairs professionals, not only folks who do mental health work, but especially for mental health professionals, it’s okay to not know the answers and to just hold space for someone. And to, as Jesse said earlier, be on a journey with them. Right. And provide the support that you can with the resources that you have available to you. I do think some additional recommendations that came up in the report though include institutional, you know, accountability and care for LGBTQ student, mental health broadly inclusive practices within counseling and wellness services for example, things related to inclusive data and intake forms, asking for chosen name and pronouns and intake forms and making sure you use those throughout your sessions.

Chris Woods:
Sometimes it might require you using a different name in pronouns in your practice with a student that might be different than what’s on a record. And that cannot always be easy, but it might be a part of creating that safe space. And then of course things related to know being mindful of LGBTQ+ navigation care, coordination and navigation how do they access care? How do we create entry points for these students into care via other, you know, resources on campus maybe access via informal, you know, chats or things related to info sessions, outreach. So it might require some unique strategies to engage these students because you know, they may be accessing services and care elsewhere that might not just yet be mental health services.

Heather Shea:
Great. Thank you so much for, for that piece and more in the report for sure. So Sofia, regardless of where you work in the institution, each individual can make a difference. Can you tell us about the recommendations in the report for individuals?

Sofia B. Pertuz:
Absolutely. And I strongly believe if you wanna save a young person’s life, you must do the work that it takes to let them know they matter and you let them know they matter by educating yourself. So that’s number one, keep learning about LGBTQ+ needs experiences, the intersection identities, role model, inclusive language and behaviors show up at events so that you can show the presence. I always say you can’t delegate presence. So showing up in whatever format that looks like is helpful. Advocate for policies, programs, resources, there are so many things happening. Again. I’m gonna bring in legislation. I don’t mean to be political, but I think, you know, when, young people see their own identities challenged in, in real life and they’re afraid that fear translates over to all the other things we talked about, the anxiety, depression and all the other feelings.

Sofia B. Pertuz:
And one thing that I love about the report I’m gonna be super biased here is that we placed links to all kinds of resources. We did not say the JED Foundation or the consortium where the only places they are excellent places to get resources and connect, but there’s also organizations who’ve been doing this for a really long time. There are LGBT centers that are local in some towns that are really working hard to connect young people and, and families to creating affirming environments. So there’s you no shortage of organizations that are really trying to get this right. And when, when someone says, I just have no idea, or I don’t know what you’re really saying is I don’t want to, because there’s a lot of information out there and maybe you don’t know where to look.

Sofia B. Pertuz:
So we at least pointed you to a few different places that have glossaries. They have the way that language has changed over time. If you wanna, I mean, I have a 14 year old who can tell me anything about anything because they know how to Google it and look it up somehow. And, and somehow they always have a pulse of where knowledge is. And, you know, we didn’t, I didn’t grow up with having at my fingertips, easy information everywhere, but this is the best possible time because it is a lot easier to access information. So as an individual, I will take no, no further excuse than to say really do it. The only thing left is, is someone’s thoughts and morals about how they feel or religious beliefs or any others. And I would say put those aside to focus on the person in front of you who needs the support and who needs to live and be here and thrive. So I’ll leave it there.

Heather Shea:
Love, love, love. This, as you said, this report is a wealth of additional resources. So the links, I, I made a, a comment earlier about making photocopies and handing them out at a staff meeting, but then you would not have the live links. So you need to actually send the PDF around so that people can actually click and get access to all of the additional organizations that have been doing this work. So thank you for sharing all of those important recommendations. We’re already out of time, probably over time. I am never short winded on my episodes of the podcast and people listen to me know. So I’d love to hear final thoughts. From folks, this episode is podcast, it’s called Student Affairs Now, what are you thinking out, pondering questioning troubling. Now either as a result of this conversation or just in your work Chris, I’m gonna start with you.

Chris Woods:
Jumping off of kind of Sofia’s point is I always wonder or I always challenge folks. And I think about this myself all the time, what’s in my sphere of influence, what do I have the agency and control I have agency we all do. What is the agency and sphere of influence that I have to control or shift or use my power to be able to influence the kinds of change I wanna see. And I think for me, when I think about this report, I think a lot about what can I do within the recommendations to be able to shift people’s mental health and wellbeing. Right. so I think that for me is a question I hope other people can ask themselves and I’ll continue to ask myself is what’s my sphere of influence where it does exist and how can I leverage my power to be able to, you know, enact change,

Heather Shea:
Love it. I love it. Sofia final thoughts from you

Sofia B. Pertuz:
Since this is Student Affairs Now I would say since I’m not in student affairs proper, now I still wanna give a love letter and a shout out to student affairs in higher education, because you are the beacon of hope. I know that I, I have I’m here because so many student affairs professionals took the time to get to know me, to affirm me as, as a human. And I was able to find my voice because they gave me more information or just let me know they cared. So I that’s what I’ll leave with that. At the end of the day, you don’t have to know the exact language or the words you just need to know that, you know, young people around you matter and you need to let them know that and, and signal those things. And in many different ways,

Heather Shea:
Love that. Thank you, Jesse.

Jesse Beal:
So I’m writing a paper right now about the failure of higher education institutions to collect accurate, complete and inclusive data on LGBTQA+ populations. And this conversation has me thinking about specifically, you know, Dean Spades theory of administrative violence, right? Which is a lot of what I’m using in this paper. And I’m thinking about the ways in which all of us can do what we can do within the area that we are responsible for to make our space more navigable, right. Exactly what Sofia and Chris were talking about. We all have the ability to make our space less harmful, more welcoming, less, violent, more kind, and loving. And I wish for all of us that we will treat the students that we work with and our colleagues with the utmost dignity and respect as all humans are deserving of.

Heather Shea:
Very well said. All three of you, thank you so much for your contributions both to today and to this report. I am so incredibly excited to release this out to our audience and share this important contribution. And so that, you know, we can create environments on our campuses where our all students can be proud and thrive but specifically our LGBTQ2S students. So thank you so much. All also sending heartfelt appreciation to our dedicated program, assistant production, assistant, Nat Ambrosey. She is awesome. She makes us look and sound and transcribe and all of the things. So thanks for all of your hard work. If you’re listening today and not already receiving our weekly newsletter, please visit our website, scroll to the bottom and add your email to our MailChimp list. And you can check out our growing archives as the, as well while you’re there.

Heather Shea:
If you found our conversation to be helpful, please share it in your social media platforms. Share with colleagues and students send links along and subscribe, invite others to subscribe, et cetera. It really helps this conversation reach more audiences. Thanks again to our sponsor of today’s episode, Colorado state university online. And if you do take a moment, visit our website, click on the sponsor’s link to learn more about CSU online and other sponsors. Finally, I’m Heather Shea, thanks again to our listeners, everyone who is watching and listening, make it count everyone.

Websites: 

The Jed Foundation

https://jedfoundation.org/proud-thriving-framework/

The Trevor Project

The Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Center Professionals

Report: 

https://jedfoundation.org/proud-thriving-framework/