In rural Siskiyou County, where California meets Oregon, the local community college is hiding its LGBTQ+ center behind closed doors. Queer students are scared for their safety.
“We are a very conservative county, and we have many students that are out at school but not at home,” said Ty Speck, who goes by “Mama Ty” among students and serves as the advisor to the LGBTQ+ club at the College of the Siskiyous. Instead, she said, the three students in the group wanted to meet in a rotating set of undisclosed locations.
All across California, but especially in rural areas and small cities scattered across the Central Coast, the Central Valley, and the Far North, community college leaders push back at the notion that California is an easy place to be queer.
In a report from last year obtained by CalMatters, college administrators across the state expressed their support for LGBTQ+ students but said that setbacks persist.
The report came as a follow up to a 2021 state grant of $10 million — the first of its kind geared specifically towards LGBTQ+ students in community colleges. But colleges consistently said that the money, less than $100,000 per college on average over five years, was not enough to hire staff positions or to set up a LGBTQ+ center on campus, even in places where many students want it.
Only 30 of California’s 115 brick-and-mortar community colleges had a designated LGBTQ+ space on campus at the time of the report. Eighteen colleges said they would use the state funds to help develop an LGBTQ+ center. The remaining 67 schools, including the students and faculty at the College of the Siskiyous, chose to invest the state’s dollars in training for staff, special graduation ceremonies or mental health support for LGBTQ+ students, who are significantly more likely to commit suicide than their peers.
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