Sarah Reinkraut stared at the TV in Syracuse University’s LGBT Resource Center. Lady Gaga’s music video for her 2008 megahit “Paparazzi” flashed on the screen. The pop star switched from one extravagant outfit to the next every few seconds.

About 20 people gathered in the living room space of the center for the annual HoliGay party on Thursday night. For Reinkraut and other students, the party was their last time in the center, which will move to the fifth floor of Bird Library during winter break.

Music videos played in the background for hours as students decorated gingerbread cookies, ate pizza and chatted about finals. Behind the TV was a wall painted with the stripes of the rainbow flag. Pillows with puns on identities, like “transgendeer” for transgender, covered the sofa.

“I’ve never seen these videos,” said Reinkraut, a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, as Gaga rolled down a purple carpet in a wheelchair.

“This is your gay baptism,” said Annabelle Lee, the RC’s graduate assistant, as everyone laughed.

SU will eventually move the RC into the Schine Student Center when renovations are complete. Those renovations will begin in May 2019, but a completion date has not been publicly announced.

The university plans to build student housing on the 700 block of Ostrom Avenue. Student Legal Services and Off-Campus and Commuter Services vacated their buildings on the block months ago. The RC, The Daily Orange and the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity now remain.

khristian kemp-delisser, the current RC director, as well as former directors, alumni and students have welcomed the move as a step forward.

They said the new location will increase foot traffic, provide greater physical accessibility and allow for collaboration between the RC, the Disability Cultural Center and Office of Multicultural Affairs. In May, all three organizations will be located together in Bird, and later, on the same floor of Schine, kemp-delisser said.

Several students said they came to the party knowing it was the last event in the house. Reinkraut asked her friend Alyeska Dronsfield, a freshman women’s and gender studies major, to go with her to HoliGay because she didn’t want to walk alone at night. She also hadn’t been to the RC.

Dronsfield said the center is too far from her dorm room in Haven Hall for her to go more often.

“Knowing that it’s going to Schine is even more comforting because it means people care enough that it’s going to the student center,” Dronsfield said.

SU created the RC in 2001, but the building at 750 Ostrom Ave. has been important to LGBTQ+ students for long before that.

Pride Union and Open Doors, the undergraduate and graduate LGBTQ+ student organizations, used the space to hold meetings and hang out, kemp-delisser said. They were a senior at SU and president of Pride Union when the center was established.

When they came to SU in 1997, kemp-delisser had a mission to come out and become the person they wanted to be — something that was too risky back home, they said.

They went to a student organization fair where Pride Union was tabling and decided to attend a meeting, on the first floor of what is now the RC.

khristian kemp-delisser, director of the LGBT Resource Center, said they hope to expand the center’s presence both on and off campus after the move to Bird Library. Alexandra Moreo | Senior Staff Photographer

“This building has been part of my queer identity since the moment I started to say that I was queer,” kemp-delisser said.

kemp-delisser served on the search committee to find the RC’s first director. They chose Adrea Jaehnig, who was an associate director of residence life. Jaehnig stayed for nine years as the head of the RC.

“There was a lot of silence around LGBT issues,” Jaehnig said. “There were a lot of needs to help address the isolation that many people experienced as well as build community and raise awareness.”

The 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old college student who was gay, acted as an impetus for increased awareness of the needs of LGBTQ+ students, Jaehnig said.

At the time, the burden of educating the campus community and responding to bias-related incidents fell on the student groups, she said. The RC provided a mechanism for the university to work with students, faculty and staff.

Jaehnig remembered one incident where a group of people in the University Hill neighborhood yelled slurs at LGBTQ+ students. She said one of the targeted students came to the center afterward and said, “I’ve never been so grateful for these walls.”

She said moving the RC to Schine represents “an opportunity for SU to embrace and acknowledge the diversity of students that are on campus.” The current center lacks wheelchair accessibility, creating a barrier for people with disabilities, she added.

kemp-delisser said every director since Jaehnig has had to consider the possibility of moving the center, but they didn’t expect to be the one to finally do it. Concerns about physical accessibility, the safety of the center and the proximity to fraternities have all been raised in the years since the RC’s founding.

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“The LGBT community now is in a space to deserve better, and Syracuse University is responding and understanding,” kemp-delisser said.

SU is currently constructing the RC’s new suite in Bird. There will be one gender-inclusive bathroom on the floor, they said.

They added that being situated near the Disability Cultural Center and the Office of Multicultural Affairs will help promote intersectionality, and that the RC can benefit from mirroring OMA’s mentorship programs.

“People have intersecting identities, so it kind of recognizes that and gives a way to be able to have more collaboration,” said Abby Henry, a student assistant at the RC and sophomore women’s and gender studies major.

Henry got involved with the RC after attending Cross Q Connections, a discussion group that helps students explore their identities. She said she was frustrated because she didn’t understand herself. A staff member pulled her aside after the discussion and asked to meet with her one-on-one, Henry said.

“They’re just so personal, and they really care about every student’s experience here,” she said about the RC’s staff.

On Monday, staff members were packing boxes with items from the room that hosted a party a few days before. The RC will officially close on Friday.

Moving forward, kemp-delisser said they hope to increase the RC’s presence off campus as well. During the summer, a transgender person came to the RC asking for help with changing their name on their ID cards, they said. The person then mentioned that they weren’t a student, but when they searched “Syracuse LGBT center,” SU’s center was the first result.

“We don’t take that lightly here,” they said. “We take that to mean there is great opportunity for our center to not only serve the campus community but also the off-campus community and to bridge that gap.”

kemp-delisser also wants to bring LGBTQ+ alumni back to SU to show students different “possibility models” and to show alumni how far the university has progressed.

“It’s a more accepting place, but there is still a lot of work left to be done, and our center has never been more valuable,” they said.

Published on December 11, 2018 at 7:59 pm

Contact Casey: [email protected] | @caseydarnell_