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SOCCER SLUMP
MATH MAN
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Students can go to a workshop to learn about the different ways to be an ally to those in the LGBTQA+ community.
This year’s Perry Lectures will focus on India’s greatest mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan, and his work
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The men’s soccer team was shut out for their seventh straight game against Bradley University
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THE
D aily E astern N ews
“TELL THE TRUTH AND DON’T BE AFRAID” Wednesday,October 11, 2017 C E L E BRATI NG A CE NT UR Y OF COVE RA GE E S T . 1 915
VOL. 102 | NO. 38 W W W . D A I L Y E A S TE R N N E W S . C O M
Conference hopes to help diversity efforts
Tea Time
By Brooke Schwartz Administration Reporter | @brooke_schwartz
THALIA ROULEY | THE DAILY EASTERN NE WS
Lucy Hill, a music performance major, pours herself a sample of zingiber ginger coconut rooibos tea at Tea Around the World, a University Board event that featured drinks from around the world, on Tuesday afternoon. Hill said she enjoys attending events like Tea Around the World, as she attended the Hug a Cactus event on the 5th. She plans on attending more events in the future.
Students share coming out stories make sure. You’d never explicitly said.’” Woolley then decided to explicitly tell their mother, who took it well. “At first, she asked if I was serious, LGBTQA+ students at Eastern are and when I told her I was, she was just like, celebrating National Coming Out Day as a ‘Okay,’” Woolley said. “We talked about it day to take pride in who they are. later and laughed it off.” Every year, Oct. 11 is recognized as NaJovan Williams, a freshman music perfortional Coming Out Day. mance major, said his coming out story was This date was chosen because it marks a very big moment. the anniversary of the 1987 National March “I was a dancer and choreographer for on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. this company at my school,” Williams said. Siobhan Doherty, a sophomore sociolo“We were doing this piece about who we gy major and president of EIU Pride, said are, and I wanted the dancers to use props. coming out is an I ended up using whiteongoing event. boards.” “A l o t o f p e o - "A lot of people think of coming out as one big event but you have Williams himple think of (com- to do it every time you meet someone. It’s a lifelong process." self was a performer, and ing out) as one big he wrote “I’m gay” on his Siobhan Doherty, president of EIU Pride event, but you have whiteboard. On opening to do it every time night, his parents were in you meet someone,” Doherty said. “It’s a Alex Woolley, a junior 2-D studio the audience. lifelong process.” art major, said their coming out story hap“They had no idea, but I felt like it was a “Sophomore year of high school I told pened in a lot of stages of claiming different good way to tell them,” Williams said. my mom I was bisexual,” Doherty said. identities. Woolley said National Coming Out Day “For me, that was like a stepping stone into “In middle school, I came out to my is not just for individuals who have come testing the waters of how my mom would close friends and told them I was gay,” out. take that as something her daughter was.” Woolley said. It is an opportunity to reflect on how Doherty said that by doing so, she does In high school, Wooley transitioned into fortunate some of us are to feel safe, while not want to invalidate bisexuality, and fully a new stage, and they decided they just others may not have that ability. recognizes it as its own sexuality. wanted to identify as queer, not necessari“People who haven’t come out yet are “At first, she told me things like, ‘No, ly homosexual. just as much queer or just as much trans you’re not. This is a phase,’ and things like “I decided to come out to my family as every other member of the community,” that,” Doherty said. then,” Woolley said. “I was having dinner Woolley said. Doherty went to Catholic school until with my sister, and it was brought up. She Travis Moody can be reached at 518-2816 or at eighth grade, where being gay was shown as asked me, ‘So, you’re not straight?’ When I tlmoody@eiu.edu. a “that’s not us” situation. told her, she responded, ‘I just wanted to
By: Travis Moody Contributing Writer | @DEN_News
“I finally told my mom in the worst way possible,” Doherty said. “I ended up texting her from upstairs while she was downstairs. I could hear her footsteps coming up the stairs, and she still kind of had that same attitude.” Doherty said both of her parents are very accepting now, and even came to the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Center for Gender and Sexual Diversity at Eastern this year. “I think it’s just because they never imagined it being an issue so close to them,” Doherty said. “Once it was, it took them a minute to adjust.”
Making campus a more accepting place will be discussed during the Making Excellence Inclusive diversity conference at 7:45 a.m. Friday in the Martin Luther King Jr. Union. There will be a keynote speech by Beth Hatt, a Fulbright Fellow and associate professor at Illinois State University, titled “Cultural Wellness As Smartness,” role-playing games and discussions about racism and first-generation college students. The program’s goal with the conference is to help those in power better interact with and teach “underrepresented groups” on campus that may need special resources or help. Catherine Polydore, a professor in counseling and student development, said Friday is not aimed at students. However, they can get involved with Making Excellence Inclusive and the other programs it hosts, Polydore said. “The purpose of (the conference) is to educate individuals who are in a position of power, so to speak, and who interact with students,” Polydore said. Jeannie Ludlow, the vice chair of Making Excellence Inclusive, said she hopes this conference opens a discussion between important people on campus about diversity and why it is important. “What we really wanted to do was bring as many people as possible from campus together to have conversations about how diversity is a part of our campus,” Ludlow said. Making Excellence Inclusive started at Eastern in 2012 as an initiative of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and has since hosted many events and presentations in an effort to help Eastern’s diversity, Ludlow said. Ludlow has been a part of Making Excellence Inclusive since its inception. “When I got here in 2008, there didn’t seem to be as much of that kind of work happening at Eastern as there was at my previous institution, and so I was very excited when people started doing the work, and I wanted to be a part of it,” Ludlow said. Both Ludlow and Polydore said one of the overarching goals of Making Excellence Inclusive is to help those for whom success, especially in the classroom, can be hard to come by, because of what that student’s reality might look like. Polydore said racism and discrimination, on and off campus, can make achieving excellence much harder for underrepresented students. “(Making Excellence Inclusive) is something people get involved with because they care very deeply,” Ludlow said.. Polydore said Masking Excellence Inclusive hopes to provide tools to faculty, staff and students to better and more inclusively live and interact with an increasingly diverse world and to help students know they can overcome the obstacles of an unequal world. “We are providing them with, we like to think of it as, the hope or inspiration to be anything they want to be,” Polydore said. “Because we have done it, they can do it too.” The next meeting is at 11 a.m. on Oct. 17 in the Dean’s Conference Room in the Doudna Fine Arts Center. Interested faculty, staff and graduate assistants have until noon on Thursday to register for the conference, on the website. Brooke Schwartz can be reached at 581-2812 or at bsschwartz@eiu.edu.