Written by Rebecca Dyer. Edited by Esme Lord.
Introduction
Hugo Weston is the LGBTQ+ Officer for Goldsmiths, University of London’s Student Union. He is completing his Master’s degree in Film Making: Screen Documentary, and he previously completed his Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Media, both at Goldsmiths. Aside from his academic studies, Hugo previously ran the Marxist society at Goldsmiths, and is a London-based drag king. In this interview, Hugo discusses the barriers that exist for LGBTQ+ students in higher education, with a particular focus on the trans experience at university. Follow Hugo on Instagram: @dragkinghugo
The Interview
What do you think are some of the biggest issues facing LGBTQ+ students as they enter higher education?
Discrimination and exclusion. I did some research and found that 60% of trans students receive negative comments and remarks at university and that this number is 22% for other members of the LGBTQ+ community. A lot of students also feel the need to dress less queer, especially trans students. I mean, university is basically a melting pot of people from lots of different backgrounds from all over the world so they have different levels of experience with and knowledge about members of the LGBTQ+ community and, so, different backgrounds and demographics can kind of clash. Furthermore, 20% of students report that they were told by teaching staff to act less queer. So this shows that even lecturers, who are used to their place of working being this huge melting point, fail to understand and treat different demographics properly and with respect.
What barriers do trans students, specifically, face and what do you think the sources of these barriers are?
The people around them, so students, lecturers, and teaching staff. They’re often not educated about trans people. Some have never encountered trans students and this can lead to a lot of discrimination. There’s this lack of education and university is statistically the point where queer people are the most visible.
Have you found some solutions over time for these barriers that have proven useful?
My position. At my university I think we’ve found a few things that, at the very least, help with these kinds of barriers. With my position [as LGBTQ+ Officer], there’s always a queer student on site. One thing that’s paired with that is the networks for all liberation groups: each liberation group at our university has a network and that network - technically I head it up - has events every week for students. So, at the very least, there will always be a coffee morning for students to come and get together and each liberation network puts on different events throughout the year and it provides that space for people. We also have a specific room which is quite interesting. We have the liberation room which is only for liberation groups and they can book that and it can be a space for just people in their group. They also have another room which has 2 beds in it for students who, if they need to get away or need somewhere to crash their heads for a minute or need some time to go and lay down, we have that for students as well, which I think is kind of a unique idea. It is quite nice because it’s a quiet room as well so you’re not allowed to make noise. It is quite nice for quite a lot of people actually.
The Student Union (SU) bathrooms are also all gender neutral as well which is kinda nice. I think also for the disabled students, we’ve made sure that the gender neutral toilets kind of have cubicles designed for disabled students so that they don’t have to use the room that’s nowhere near anyone else, which people quite enjoy.
So this question very much ties into everything you just said but: What support is available for LGBTQ+ students with their universities and student unions, specifically with regards to social support, mental health support and also administrative support in cases where students have been discriminated against?
We have Student Union physicians. We have someone who handles a sexual violence project which the SU has been running for a few years to help students. We have like an advice representation team that work as advisors as well. One of our main physicians in the SU is the welfare and liberation officer; she handles everything in terms of anything she can do for queer students. We also, of course, have things like an LGBTQ+ support hotline for anyone who’s experienced hate crimes which is very good as it’s a dedicated one for queer students. Kind of every group has their own hate crime support line so that when they talk with someone, they know that it’s someone who knows about their experience specifically. I think this is a nice little touch. We obviously have wellbeing services but the ones the university management provide have been heavily criticised over the last couple of years for not being very inclusive of liberation groups, so that’s something that needs to be worked on.
What steps need to be taken to increase accessibility of higher education for LGBTQ+ students and to make sure that the academic environment is safe and inclusive for them?
I think in terms of making it more accessible, realistically, it’s less of a - well it is obviously a university problem - but it’s also quite a societal problem. I don’t think it’s something that can be solved completely within the university space. As I was saying earlier, we aren’t taught at a younger age about queer issues and that really has an effect on university. So, I think it needs to be a whole education system approach, kind of a whole societal approach in terms of making university accessible to all liberation groups. For example, breaking down the walls of like elitism and things like that would really help because I was looking at the report earlier and a lot of POC queer students and working class queer students face a lot of issues. They’re the ones that are discriminated [against] the most, so I think that breaking down these barriers in university would be a really good place to look at. But I do think that there’s maybe stuff...For example, lectures should have to do mandatory training and stuff like this. Like, I know at our university, lecturers are doing training around racism to know how to deal with that and to fully understand issues that POC students have, but they don’t have anything for queer students like that, so I think it would maybe be good to include that in the training our lecturers get because they are the ones that really set the tone for a university environment. I think they should be the ones that should really be educated on these issues.
Interviewer: That’s really interesting. I think you’re very right that it’s very much a systemic issue that’s deeply ingrained into our society and, so, when coming at it, I agree that it’s not something that higher education alone can handle. The whole education system needs to work on it. I would like to add something that I had at Sixth Form where, each year, we had to complete Equality and Diversity training. We would get the day off of college (Sixth Form) every year to do this, and it was half a day completing videos and questionnaires and small assignments to try and help students to better understand the discrimination that marginalised communities face so something like that would be quite helpful.
Yeah definitely, because I don’t remember seeing anything like that when I was at Tomlinscote, and I don’t remember even Goldsmiths doing anything like that. Society leaders had to but that’s only a very small proportion of the student body.
Interviewer: Yeah, the Sixth Form I went to - The Sixth Form College Farnborough - was very good. But yeah, it would be very nice if they taught this kind of thing. Like I remember that even at a very young age, there was this discrimination that teachers had against students, and it was never really addressed. So, from my perspective specifically, I experienced racism from my teachers when they found out that I was Persian and so I think the same kind of training that I would have liked in that situation can be applied to train teachers to better understand LGTBQ+ students, and to better educate the next generation.
Exactly, they can’t really teach children equality training if they don’t understand it themselves. It’s just gonna create more issues.
How can students and academics at universities help to make these steps a reality?
I think just kind of being aware is quite a good thing. I don’t really like saying “educate yourself”; I feel like everyone always says it so much but kind of that yeah.
Interviewer: It’s a good statement, though.
It is a good statement, yeah. To be a bit basic, “educate yourself”. But yeah, I think basically students can sometimes have a mentality, especially from students from these small towns where this kind of discrimination can really fester because of that lack of exposure. I think students coming into these spaces with a more open mind would really help the situation because you do have a lot of students who use the excuse of “Well I was just brought up differently” so I think this could be something that academics could really take the lead on in terms of having talks with people about this and how it’s not just about being brought up a certain way. It’s very easy to just learn and change your behaviour considering it really isn’t that much of a behaviour change when you actually look at what you’d have to do. Just be nice to someone. It’s really not as hard as they seem to think it is. But yeah I think it’s just being aware of people and just taking that extra time to think about what you’re gonna do and say around people that could really make a difference to especially trans and non-binary people’s lives. Like it really does help when people get the correct pronouns or they can use the right toilet. It actually really makes our day to a point that cis people don’t really seem to understand.
Obviously the goal of this blog is to amplify the voices of marginalised communities and work towards a more accessible education system, so what do you think the blog could do to try to help make academia more accessible and inclusive for LGBTQ+ students?
My first thought is stuff like basic explanations of things for students who aren’t aware. Maybe definitions, kind of like myth busting. For example, with bi people and trans and non-binary people, there’s a lot of myths and false information spread, and then stereotypes that, in their own ways, drive false information so maybe it would be good to have a page pointing out this false information and correcting it. I think the stereotypes and false information can be some of the worst things that affect these groups because they just happen so often. I think that could be a good way of helping really.
Interviewer: Yeah, I think that does sound really good. We could probably get a small team to work on creating a page like that. I completely agree. I mean, you remember when I came out as bi that one of the things that was said to me was: “Oh, bi people can’t commit” or “You just haven’t made a decision” and I was like, “excuse you?”.
Or “If you’re in a relationship with a woman you’re now a lesbian. If you’re with a man, you’re straight. You can only be bi while single”.
Interviewer: Oh my goodness, that used to really [redacted] me off. And people used to be like “Becca, I think you’re this much gay and this much straight”. And I was like, “No, I’m just bi.” I mean now I say I’m pan because I really really do not care about gender. But yeah, I completely agree, I think that kind of thing would have been really helpful, particularly growing up, it would have been really nice if, when I’d come out, people hadn’t had these stereotypes, and I’m assuming you had a similar experience.
Yeah, definitely.
What are the biggest obstacles when trying to make meaningful change here?
I think the biggest obstacle we’ve found whenever there’s been any campaigning for more support is, obviously, it always comes down to money. For example, we had the rent strike at my university this year and, during the rent strike, we asked for more funding for the wellbeing service, better funding for the sexual violence project, and a better system for reporting hate crimes. And every time, we were told that it costs too much and that the uni couldn’t afford it. So I think that is the thing that really just stops all of this the most because they always say that money is the thing that stops everything from being better, basically. Unfortunately, with how privatised universities are, it’s becoming increasingly hard to get these sorts of services. Every uni has some face-level service but they don’t have much depth to them and they don’t really provide as much of a service as you think they do, unfortunately. I think, realistically, as long as universities are run for profit and students are treated as customers, I have a feeling we’re not going to see the kind of support that students from any liberation group need because, unfortunately, it’s not something that university management seems very interested in solving, which is a shame.
Just so that I better understand the issue with privatisation, would you say that the way that universities market themselves as being inclusive for students is sort of the same thing as green-washing with the sustainability campaign? Like, they say that the university’s inclusive but really it’s just a guise until you’ve already given them your money.
Oh definitely. I mean, my university’s the biggest perpetrator of it ever because they market themselves as this hugely radical left-wing university and then everything management does is the exact opposite of that. I think, yeah, definitely because you even see - it’s kind of a bit unrelated but it gets through the point - even with like the way they market accommodation to students. It’s marketed as really great and you see these pictures of their showrooms and then when you get there it’s full of mold which I think is kind of a good metaphor for what it’s like for queer students when you get there because you’re promised the world and this really idyllic place to live and then you get there and there kind of isn’t really any support for you. Even lecturers have been guilty of treating queer students really badly.
As a media student, which forms of media do you believe can have the greatest impact when advocating for LGBTQ+ rights in higher education and the education system as a whole?
I’m probably a bit biased when I say this but I’m a documentary student and I, of course, think that documentary is a very good medium to use for these kinds of issues because it can really…. For example, showing documentaries - especially ones that are quite participatory so it means that it’s basically produced by the members of the group that’s represented in the film - It can act as a really good way of presenting that proper insight to people who don’t know or need educating. It can just show that experience.
So you said earlier that money is the biggest obstacle that is really stopping everything, is there something that, for example, is it possible to try to get fundraised money? Would universities accept fundraised money for this?
They do because…. Of course they don’t mind paying for it if it isn’t coming out of their pocket. It is something that they’re very open to: students raising the money themselves. But, obviously, it’s not a very final solution to this problem because what you really need is committed funds for students each year and not just the odd fundraiser.