During Paymon Ebrahimzadeh’s first week at UCLA, he walked
through an activities fair, quietly took a flier from the UCLA
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Campus Resource
Center’s table, and hurried on.
Not yet ready to publicly come out as gay, he was looking for a
place where he could feel comfortable exploring his identity.
Ebrahimzadeh, a fourth-year music history student, said he found
it at the LGBT Resource Center, whose 10th-anniversary celebration
Saturday kicked off this year’s National Coming Out Week.
The week, which culminates in a resource fair and dance this
Friday night, is designed to provide visibility for the LGBT
community, promote discussion, acceptance and pride, and give
people a welcoming environment in which to come out, said Jennifer
Partnoff, a fourth-year history and women’s studies student
and member of the Coming Out Week committee.
“It’s our biggest event of the year, just for us to
be proud of who we are,” Partnoff said.
Other events scheduled for the week include a panel discussion,
a performance night, a barbecue with a question-and-answer period,
and a “kiss-in” at Meyerhoff Park. All members of the
campus community, regardless of their sexual or gender identity,
are welcome at these events, Partnoff said.
But support is not limited to this week. LGBT information can be
found year-round at the resource center, whose goal is to
“create a safe journey” through the university
experience, said Ronni Sanlo, the center’s director and a
lecturer in the graduate school of education.
Founded in March 1995, the LGBT center first inhabited a small
room in Haines Hall. It then moved to a slightly larger space in
Kinsey Hall before shifting to its current location in the Student
Activities Center. The LGBT center now features computer facilities
and a 4,000-volume library.
Community interest has kept pace with physical expansion.
“When we were over in Kinsey Hall, we were lucky to have
six or seven people a day come in,” Sanlo said.
Now, she said, “we average about 50 students a
day.”
Sanlo stressed that the center aims to create a safe space for
the entire campus community, never taking partisan-political
stances or discriminating based on sexual identity.
“One thing with the center is we’ll never ask what
anyone’s orientation is or what the reason that they’re
there is,” said Tom Bourdon, a center administrator and
graduate student in education.
“It’s just a place for people to comfortably hang
out and get information if they want it,” he said.
The center isn’t designed only to serve the LGBT
community. Many non-LGBT students visit the center as well.
“A lot of students who are straight come in to use the
library to learn about friends and family,” Sanlo said.
Students also rely on the LGBT center as a space to gather
information and strength to deal with the outside world.
“Everybody new that you meet, you have to come out
to,” Partnoff said, adding that being able to spend time in
the center allows her to relax.
“Having those spaces around you, it makes you more
comfortable with yourself,” she said.
Ebrahimzadeh found help at the LGBT Center when he was trying to
come to grips with his sexual identity, and when he was pondering
the ramifications of coming out. At first, he said, he was
terrified to even go into the center.
“I literally had to go right before it closed, and my
heart would be racing and my palms would be sweaty,”
Ebrahimzadeh said. “My world would collapse if anyone saw me
there.”
But once he was there, Sanlo directed him to a campus discussion
group called Mensrap, where he slowly began to shed his
apprehensions. Later, when Ebrahimzadeh was thinking about coming
out to his mother but was afraid of her reaction, Sanlo pointed him
toward resources that would allow him to stay at UCLA even if his
mother stopped financially supporting him.
“That knowledge, going into it, made my decision whether
to come out to my mom or not,” Ebrahimzadeh said.
Ebrahimzadeh has since become active in LGBT student leadership.
Last year, he was president of the Queer Alliance. He says he
continues to enjoy spending time at the center.
“It’s a second home,” he said.
The UCLA campus in particular and the University of California
system as a whole have historically been very supportive of the
LGBT community, Sanlo said.
“This is probably one of the safest and most accepting
campuses in the country,” she said, adding that UCLA has
always unhesitatingly complied with UC policies that allow for
partner benefits and provide specialized health-care coverage to
transgendered individuals.
The anniversary celebration falls just over a year after the
LGBT center was the target of incidents of vandalism that police
have deemed hate crimes.
Sanlo said that those incidents were the isolated work of an
individual rather than evidence of a campuswide attitude.