Fall 2000 Newsletter

College Hires Stephen Collingsworth, First LGBT Concerns Coordinator

By Walter Cheng '97

In the last BiGALA newsletter, we reported that Williams was engaged in a candidate search to fill a newly created Coordinator of LGBT Concerns position. After an extensive search and interview process, the college selected Stephen Collingsworth for a three-year post, which began in January 2000. This summer, I had a chance to speak with Stephen and learned a little about his background, his work at Williams so far and his goals for the upcoming year.

Stephen has a bachelor's degree in English and master's degree in Education Policy and Leadership, both from Ohio State University. Prior to coming to Williams, he worked as the Director of the Kaleidoscope Youth Coalition, a LGBT teen center in Columbus, Ohio. Stephen has also worked in other LGBT-related arenas, including being the first education coordinator at Stonewall Columbus, a LGBT human-rights organization.

In his short time at Williams, Stephen has already made significant strides towards increasing awareness of LGBT issues on campus. In addition to acclimating himself to the Purple Valley, he has thrown himself into numerous college committees. A member of the Dively Committee, which is responsible for much of the LGBT event programming on campus, Stephen also sits in on weekly Dean's meetings as a voice for LGBT concerns in the consideration of college policy-making. Furthermore, Stephen works with the campus' Eating Disorders Group and Sexual Assault Response Team, advocating for continued efforts to address LGBT-specific eating disorder and domestic violence issues.

Besides his roles on campus, Stephen has taken on a number of positions in Berkshire County-wide LGBT organizations. These include facilitating a coming-out group and leading a youth group at the Berkshire Stonewall Community Coalition. Due to recent (and historic) attacks on LGBT students outside the Williams campus, Stephen believes that by forging ties with community members, such incidents might be handled cooperatively on a broader scope.

For the upcoming year, Stephen has planned a number of large-scale projects. As an example, he is designing a series of tracking forms to address the continuing problem of LGBT student retention and homophobia on campus. He indicated that although the campus was professionally and administratively progressive, many people have sensed an underlying homophobia, particularly in more casual and off-campus situations. To provide more evidence to support this assertion and collect sound data, Stephen plans to distribute forms to incoming first-years that would help to identify LGBT students and more accurately track LGBT student attrition and retention. Stephen also plans to create harassment tracking forms that would allow students to report non-violent anti-gay attacks, such as jokes or slurs, that would normally not be reported to Williams security.

In addition to this large data collection project, which should help to identify specific areas needing improvement, Stephen mentioned other projects, which include furthering the discourse on and acceptance of transgender issues, promoting spiritual awareness among LGBT students, creating a LGBT faculty-student mentoring program, and forming a queer students of color organization.

In my last few minutes with Stephen, I also asked him what he thought BiGALA members could do to help out. He indicated that the recent BiGALA reunion, which was connected with Queer Pride Days on campus, received numerous positive comments from students. He encouraged continued involvement of alumni with the organizing of Queer Pride Days and thought that someone who might be geographically close to Williamstown could participate on its planning committee. He also thought that alumni could be an invaluable career mentoring resource for students, offering them advice on how to navigate through the workforce and graduate school as openly LGBT individuals.

Back To Top

© 2000-2001 BiGLATA
site comments