QPOC Involvement with the GLBT KC

Hello GLBTKC Membership!

My name is Derek Murakami, Residence Director at Northwestern University, and Co-Core Member for the Queer People of Color group within the GLBTKC. I serve in this role alongside Bobby Kunstman, Senior Associate Director for Student Life & Leadership with the Carolina Union at UNC Chapel Hill. For those that were able to attend the annual conference, I hope you made it back safe and sound. For those of you unable to attend, we hope to see you next year!

Over the past three years we have been able to host a QPOC social with the intent of providing an informal place for queer professionals of color to meet up and start to build connections heading into the conference. Every year we see have seen increasing numbers attend this event and we hope this event continues to grow for years to come.

As our visibility increases we continue to seek out ways to better serve our community and at this year’s conference in New Orleans we received some great feedback about ways to further engage our queer professionals of color. One idea was to create a listserv where folks would be able to remain connected and continue conversations beyond the annual conference. It is our intent to use this listserv sparingly as we know your inboxes are already full, but hope to utilize this avenue to connect as a community and provide support from afar. If you are interested in being part of this listserv, please sign up here:  http://bit.ly/NASPA_QPOC

Another initiative we are working to develop is the creation of a QPOC Connexions advisory board. The goal of this board is to solicit participation from other identity based Knowledge Communities with the focus of furthering visibility, dissemination of knowledge, and implementing engagement of QPOC related topics beyond the annual conference. Acknowledgement of the intersections of identity remains an important and a priority for us as core members. We are looking to have around a dozen folks to participate initially and will see how this may expand in the future!

A Facebook group also exists for QPOC student affairs professionals and if you are not part of this already, look us up and ask to join! http://bit.ly/QPOC_FB

If there are other ideas/feedback out there please feel free to reach out to our Co-chairs or Bobby and myself directly! We look forward to serving our community in the coming year!

Sincerely,
Derek Murakami
Co-Core Member for Queer People of Color
GLBT Knowledge Community