Our Mission, Values & More
Who Are We?
The Pride Resource Center one of seven cultural and resource centers within the Office of Inclusive Excellence. Our fellow offices include the Asian Pacific Cultural Center, Black/African American Cultural Center, El Centro, Native American Cultural Center, Student Disability Center, and Women and Gender Advocacy Center.
Mission
The Pride Resource Center provides programs and services to support the retention and thriving of LGBTQIA+ students at CSU.
Pride also provides resources for all community members to embrace and expand their understanding of sexual and romantic orientations and gender identity and expression through engaging the campus in critical learning and action towards the liberation of our wider LGBTQIA+ community, particularly those who face oppression based on other intersecting identities.
Vision
To create a campus culture in which all CSU LGBTQ+ students can thrive.
What Do We Do?
Community Building
The Pride Resource Center offers regular opportunities for students to build community on campus. We build community through hosting events, retreats, student organizations, support groups, and opportunities to learn more about identity and our LGBTQIA+ history.
Advocacy
The Pride Resource Center regularly advocates for institutional change that better supports the safety, retention, success, and mental wellbeing of all LGBTQIA+ students, while centering the ways in which systemic barriers disproportionately impact students based on race, culture, ethnicity, social class, and other identities. We do this through supporting student voice and advocacy, creating opportunities for students to learn about leadership and activism, and serving on institutional committees.
Resources
The Pride Resource Center serves as a connection point for students, employees, and community members seeking resources regarding coming into their identities, transitioning, healthcare, mental health, finances, housing, document/identification changes, and supporting loved ones.
Education
The Pride Resource Center offers regular training and educational opportunities for members of the CSU community, as well as the surrounding area, to expand their awareness and knowledge of sexual and romantic orientations, and gender identity and expression, and to develop skills to better advocate for members of the LGBTQIA+ community, from an intersectional lens.
Student Success
The Pride Resource Center is committed to promoting our students’ personal and academic success at CSU and beyond. We focus on supporting our new students’ transition to CSU, creating partnership to support students’ experiences in the classroom, and empowering students through graduation and post-college planning.
How Do We Do It?
Values
The Pride Resource Center uses the following values to shape the role our programs, initiatives, student leaders, and staff have in supporting and serving our students and campus community.
Queer Joy | We’re committed to unapologetically embracing and celebrating each other and our full authentic selves.
Queer Community | We’re committed to investing in our community and expanding the ways in which we support one another’s needs for love, laughter, resources, accountability, and care.
Queer Agency | We’re committed to empowering our community’s voice and rights to self-determination and self-advocacy.
Queer Futures | We’re committed to visioning and creating futures full of hope, curiosity, and possibility.
Queer Liberation | We’re committed to freedom and social justice – to challenging the norms and institutionalization of white supremacy, dominance, colonialism, and exclusion and their inherent ties to cisheterosexism, homophobia, and transphobia.
Philosophy
The Pride Resource Center commits to approaching our work of providing community building, advocacy, resources, education, and student success initiatives through a student-centered, intersectional, collaborative, and justice-oriented lens. This work requires care and for us to be reflective, adaptable, and open to feedback. As a member of the Office of Inclusive Excellence, we maintain our responsibility to invest in collective coalition-building that works towards dismantling all forms of institutional and systemic oppression and exclusion that impact folks across race, ethnicity, disability, gender, sexuality, social class, documentation status, language, veteran status, religion/faith, and more.
Pride Community Guidelines
The following guidelines were created by students and staff of the Pride Resource Center to support us in continually making Pride the place our students, of all intersecting identities, want and need it to be. We encourage all who visit the center to consider how they can contribute to these Community Guidelines.
- We are a community that cares and advocates for others.
- Our community is always growing – welcome & make space for others.
- Keeping the center and our kitchen clean is a form of community care.
- We value consent – check in with others about sensitive topics, volume, and space.
- Feedback and accountability help our community thrive.
- Taking care of our community starts with taking care of ourselves.
- All of our struggles are connected. Learning through dialogue & listening helps us grow and act in solidarity.
- Celebrating queer joy and love is an act of resistance and healing – create these moments for yourself and others.
