LGBT mentoring lost without leader

For 10 years, psychologist Pat Alford-Keating helped ease the difficult transition lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students faced as they were introduced to the LGBT community for the first time.

Through a one-on-one mentoring program, LGBT students struggling with the coming-out process received advice and support from individuals who had already transitioned into the LGBT community.

Alford-Keating said hundreds of students participated in the program as mentees over its ten-year existence at UCLA until she transferred to UC Irvine this past August, leaving the program without a leader and without a home.

Student Psychological Services sponsored the program under the leadership of Alford-Keating ““ who was employed by SPS during her time at UCLA ““ but has not found a replacement since her departure, causing the program to come to a standstill.

While no formal guidance is in place, mentors and mentees continue to meet on an unofficial basis, said Zarah Ersoff, a graduate student in ethnomusicology who has acted as a mentor for over a year.

In addition to the 30 hours of initial training mentors received, Alford-Keating held meetings bimonthly to discuss problems or concerns mentors faced. Alford-Keating also supervised all screening and admittance into the program for both mentors and mentees.

“Knowing Pat is not here makes me feel less secure,” Ersoff said. “There is no one I can call on for advice for what to do, and that makes me a little more uncomfortable.”

The program was created so that mentees could receive support and advice from their mentors to assist in the development of a positive LGBT identity and “feel comfortable in their own skin,” Alford-Keating said.

She said the program was also created to decrease fear and negative stigma associated with the LGBT community and to counsel people through their coming-out processes.

“Coming out is a very isolated process for many people,” she said. “Most people suffer in silence and are very depressed and anxious about it.”

Alford-Keating said she requested that the program continue after she left and does not understand why the mentoring program stopped since the need for it has not disappeared.

“I’m surprised the program was discontinued because the LGBT community is one of the University of California’s at-risk student populations,” Alford-Keating said, referring to an annual survey on students’ mental health which revealed that the UC’s LGBT community has a higher rate of depression and suicide than other groups.

Dr. Liz Gong-Guy, director of Student Psychological Services, said the LGBT mentoring program first came about because of Alford-Keating’s personal and professional interest in the project and her high level of expertise in the LGBT community.

She added that SPS has been unable to find a replacement for Alford-Keating because of low interest in the program among current staff and because budget concerns prevent SPS from hiring any new staff members to oversee the program.

Former participants in the mentoring program expressed concern and confusion that the program ended abruptly.

“The program is (too) amazing … to have it just disappear. That is not something that I want to see,” said Brenda Moore, an employee in the UCLA Registrar’s Office and LGBT mentor for four years.

Moore said mentors played important roles in the lives of LGBT students because they provided information and resources.

“(We) are willing to listen to what it is they have to say in a non-judgmental and caring way,” she said.

While SPS has not made any formal plans to continue the program, former participants said they hope that the mentoring program can continue through the UCLA LGBT Campus Resource Center.

But Ronni Sanlo, director of the center, said she is skeptical of that suggestion because the LGBT center is limited as a counseling center and cannot keep records on any individual.

Sanlo said instead she would like to see the mentor program evolve into a peer-counseling program because she believes it would be more effective and allow a greater number of locations for students to drop in, such as centers in residence halls and around campus, which would stay open later at night.

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