About the HSI mini grant series
Each year, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion awards a variety of high-impact mini grants to campus projects that support Latino students through targeted initiatives. Last year, the office distributed $35,000 across 17 projects. This story is one of 11 Mustang News features highlighting where and how those grants made an impact.
To support the LGBTQ+ and Latino community at Cal Poly, the Trans Queer Student Union (TQSU) hosted a panel focused on intersections of identities and various other topics, funded by their HSI mini grant.
The panel was an opportunity for members of the Cal Poly community to share their experiences regarding intersections of “culture, gender, religion, and more,” according to the HSI mini grants site.
Former TQSU event coordinator, Jennifer Carbajal, an ethnic studies senior, discussed some of her experience coordinating the event.
“Cal Poly is not the most supportive environment for queer people or people of color in general. When we got the grant money, the first thing I really did was look back on my plans and think ‘What’s the most realistic way we can support people?’” Carbajal said. “When I was doing this community work, I thought about what would have helped me when I didn’t really know what was going on and when I needed a support network.”
Carbajal’s application included a budget for the panel, a plan for the panel’s coordination and scheduling and an explanation about how the club would “support the queer and Hispanic communities” through this plan. After receiving the grant, Carbajal explained that most of the funds were spent on catering for the event, since the rest of the plans did not require financial backing.
Carbajal has a background in event planning through the Student Diversity and Belonging department, having worked in several diversity centers at Cal Poly. One thing her background helped her prepare for was navigating the current political climate and social environment for LGBTQ+ people at Cal Poly.
After determining what the panel’s main focus should be, Carbajal worked with other TQSU officers and mentors at the Pride and Men & Masculinities centers to plan topics for discussion at the panel.
“I think it’s really important in the queer community to have mentors, and being able to talk to other queer people,” Carbajal said.
In the planning process, Carbajal explained that she wanted to create a guide for discussion around important topics that affect the LGBTQ+ and Hispanic communities at Cal Poly in their day-to-day lives. She discussed with her mentors and other TQSU officers what topics impact the audience the most, especially in terms of subjects like intersectionality and oppression.
“Queer and Hispanic identities are not completely separate things. For a lot of us, our identities kind of inform one another, and with intersectionality, we have to understand that different topics intersect in a way that impacts people,” Carbajal said.
Carbajal said that she does not typically lead panels but has led support circles and book discussions before. In her experiences as a dialogue facilitator, she stated that her goal is “not to dominate discussion.”
As a panel facilitator, she was there to steer the discussion in a certain direction and keep it from straying too off-topic. In this panel, she wanted to make sure panelists were able to discuss their experiences in more depth than most mainstream discussions allow them to.
“I was allowing people to talk about their own life experiences. I think that a lot of times narratives around minority cultures get only one note. They’re not going to talk about the nitty gritty, like, how does this make us feel, and how does this affect us in a material way,” Carbajal said.
Carbajal discussed the impact of community and how important support is in the LGBTQ+ and Hispanic communities. She explained that this concept helped guide the discussions in the panel, because it “gave an understanding of how people’s lives actually play out” and how she could “give a good canvas for people to talk about these topics” when they usually would not.
“I believe it can feel really awkward being a person of color in this campus and not initially seeing yourself represented,” Carbajal said. “Events like this panel can really provide a space to meet not necessarily people who are exactly like you, but people who, at the very least, are willing to learn and share your experiences and share theirs as well.”
Building community was a major focus for the panel discussions. Although the panel occurred at the end of the academic year, Carbajal explained that many of the attendees were able to connect to each other and build their own networks at the event.
Throughout the year, TQSU had initiatives to bring together “queer and trans people of color (QTPOC),” and the panel helped further those initiatives. Carbajal mentioned that having serious discussions about QTPOC experiences can be difficult in a predominantly white institution (PWI), and that this panel was especially helpful in opening up that dialogue for students.
“We had a lot of folks show up and stay there the entire time. I was pleasantly surprised, honestly, because I think it can be really hard to get turnout for these serious discussions sometimes,” Carbajal said. “How are we going to start approaching these kinds of issues within our community, the issues that impact us, without talking about them first and providing space for them?”
After the panel, Carbajal outlined next steps to incoming officers at TQSU for applying to future grants. Although the panel was the only event planned with the grant funds, she hopes that there will be more events in the club’s future.
“In onboarding, I showed the current officer team how we’re doing things, how we’re handling Cal Poly, and how to apply for grants like this. I explained also how to apply for this grant, but it’s hard to say if we’re going to get it again, especially since it’s so competitive.” Carbajal said. “I’m glad there’s such an awesome community on campus. Safety and belonging are really important to them, and that’s why we’re all in the same community together.”
Since the panel had so much focus on community impact, both in the discussion and in how the panel was framed, Carbajal emphasized how important having communal spaces is.
“No matter your age, no matter how far you’ve come, you can really rely on community to really support you and take you further,” Carbajal said.
