LGBT center to relocate to Frist

The LGBT center is scheduled to move in January from Dillon Court East to a more spacious three-room office in Frist Campus Center, an expansion that supporters say will help increase visibility for and give much-needed space to Princeton's LGBT community.

Until this year, the office of LGBT Student Services Coordinator Debbie Bazarsky was located in West College, an environment that both students and administrators found cramped.

"With the arrival of Debbie Bazarsky as Director a few years ago, the LGBT center has flourished," President Tilghman said in an email. "Student participation had increased and the center's home in West College was not only difficult to find, it was uncomfortable once you got there. It seemed time to give this successful student center a better campus home."

The new offices are currently used by the Pace center, which will move to another location on the second floor of Frist. The space will include Bazarsky's office, a library, computers and recreational space, and will also be used by Pride Alliance and Princeton's other LGBT groups.

Bazarsky said the administration was very helpful in bringing the proposal to fruition.

"President Tilghman really came out strong in her support for the creation of the LGBT Center," Bazarsky said. "I think the students were pleasantly surprised at how easy it was."

Students have been involved in the planning since the very beginning. The proposal was first drafted in 2001 by the then-president of the Pride Alliance and was eventually finalized by Kristopher Kersey '04, former Pride Alliance vice president.

Kersey, who met with University administrators while he was a student, said his initial skepticism about the administration's response dissolved by the end of the process.

"When the proposal was first discussed it was not clear whether or not it would even be taken seriously; the campus environment needed improvement," Kersey said in an email. "Thanks to the work of Debbie Bazarsky and the leadership of President Tilghman, by the time the proposal was submitted, it was already clear to the LGBT student body that Princeton cared about and understood the needs of these students."

Claire Woo '06, president of the Pride Alliance, said she appreciates the change.

"[The LGBT Center] gives people a space to go to. I mean, we had Debbie's office before, but if you ever go into her office it's small, and there's people in there, and there's not enough space," Woo said.

That will all change when the center's new space is completed. Bazarsky, who started a similar center at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1999, anticipates that the LGBT Center will be busy, active and "an easily identifiable place to find community."

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The opening of the center, Woo said, acknowledges that there is an LGBT community on campus — an important step for a group that "is getting bigger and bigger," with 150 attendees at an ice cream social for freshmen this week.

"The Center is necessary to bring Princeton up to speed with its peer institutions, the majority of which already have active LGBT centers," Kersey said.

Kersey added that the Center will serve Princeton's LGBT community in the same way that other minorities on campus have their needs fulfilled.

"There is nothing 'special' about an LGBT Center; it serves the same purpose as the International Center, Women's Center and Carl A. Fields Center," he said. "The Center will enrich the lives of the entire campus community. We now have a place for this invisible minority."