UND LGBTQ community thriving despite unclear future (2024)

GRAND FORKS – UND is home to a flourishing LGBTQ community thanks to efforts from students, staff and faculty, though its future is shrouded in uncertainty as states across the country propose and enact bans against diversity, equity and inclusion at public institutions.

Jeff Maliskey became the first director of UND’s Pride Center in 2022 after having steered it in an interim capacity since 2017. Under his stewardship, the LGBTQ community has taken an increasingly active role on campus.

“You start small, and then it’s grown all over campus,” Maliskey said. “That’s why you really do see us kind of as this hub in the state, this hub in little Grand Forks, North Dakota, as the ones leading the initiatives.”

Darin Buri, the College of Engineering and Mines Facility and library manager, credits the increased visibility of the community to Maliskey.

“Jeff’s been wonderful,” Buri said. “It wasn’t always visible, but I think it’s gotten a lot more visible since Jeff started in his position.”

Maliskey joined the university staff in May 2015, during a time when marriage equality was a political hot topic. This would culminate in the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision the very next month, which made same-sex marriage a constitutionally protected right.

The month before Maliskey came to Grand Forks, the North Dakota Legislature voted down a bill that would prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ individuals .

“(It wasn’t) a great conversation that I was hearing around campus from other faculty and staff, from students that were engaging in conversations,” Maliskey said. “So I almost felt like I was retreating a little bit back into the closet, if you will.”

Over two years later, in the 2017 fall semester, Maliskey was approached by the university’s vice president to take the interim leadership position of the newly founded Pride Center.

The center was created as a result of student advocacy, providing a physical space as well as resources and support for a community that has been active on campus since the creation of the Ten Percent Society, now known as the Queer and Trans Alliance, in the 1980s. Both were firsts for the state, according to Maliskey, creating a picture of a university leading efforts for queer and trans inclusion in North Dakota.

From the 1980s onward, students were responsible for leading these efforts, Maliksey said. Once the Pride Center was established, staff and faculty began to assume a greater role, using the Pride Center to provide students with support and resources as well as forming their own advocacy group, the LGBTQ Staff and Faculty Association.

During the most recent academic year, the Pride Center held 43 events, including the LGBTQ+ Higher Education Day-Long Institute and week-long events like Coming out Week and Trans Awareness Week. The center also provided academic support for LGBTQ students, such as study tables and academic challenges that were successful in raising the GPA of some of its participants, according to the center’s annual report.

Maliskey said the effect has been felt by students. The number of students involved with the Pride Center and the programs it offers has increased every year and the climate for LGBTQ students on campus has improved since.

However, the national conversation surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion doesn’t bode well for the center and the support it provides for students.

According to the Chronicle Of Higher Education , 85 bills that would prohibit public colleges and universities from having diversity, equity and inclusion offices and staff have been introduced across 28 states and the U.S. Congress since 2023. Of those 85 bills, 14 have become law in states like Florida, Texas and most recently Utah, where LGBTQ resource centers have closed their doors for good.

In North Dakota, such a bill was signed into law last April , though it extended only to prohibiting mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion — commonly referred to as DEI — training and diversity statements. Offices that receive funding from public universities, such as UND’s Pride Center, can remain open for now.

“We don’t have the federal protection and it’s really up to the states,” Maliskey said. “It’s not looking great or promising for us right now.”

According to Maliskey, closing down these centers could result in students, faculty and staff leaving the schools and the states to go to institutions elsewhere. This doesn’t just apply to queer and trans students, Maliskey said, but allies as well.

A closure could also result in an increase in mental health concerns, which Maliskey said is already being experienced by states that have lost their services.

“Are we going to be here tomorrow? Oh, I hope,” Maliskey said. “I hope we can continue to do our work to support students. We know there’s a need, because if we don’t we know the outcome isn't great for our students.”

In the past year, 39% of LGBTQ young people nationwide seriously considered attempting suicide and 12% attempted suicide, according to survey data from the Trevor Project , a nonprofit focusing on suicide prevention and crisis intervention for LGBTQ youth. Additionally, among those surveyed who reported living in very accepting communities, the suicide rate was less than half as those who reported living in very unaccepting communities.

Such figures reflect the importance for LGBTQ adults on campus to be more open about their identity and support the students, according Bridget Brooks, an instructional designer and the current chair of the LGBTQ Staff and Faculty Association’s Board of Executives.

“I think being visible, if it saves one person’s life, it’s worth it,” Brooks said. “And it’s worth anything that could ever possibly happen to myself if someone else’s life is saved. So that’s why we need to be visible.”

The LGBTQ Faculty and Staff Association was created in the summer of 2021 after Maliskey, at the time the assistant director for the Hillyard Center and LGBTQ Initiatives, brought together a group of 10 faculty and staff.

According to Maliskey, the LGBTQ Staff and Faculty Association began as an informal network of LGBTQ staff and faculty who met to have conversations and build a community

Even though there’s a large number of LGBTQ faculty and staff on campus, previous activity was almost exclusively the territory of students, according to Buri. This meant that until the association was formed, there wasn’t any formal organization for faculty and staff.

“Now with this organization, we meet with the students a lot and participate in a lot of the things that they do,” Buri said. “So it’s a way for us to be visible and supportive of them as well.”

Maliskey said the association has not only increased the community’s visibility on campus, but it has also been able to connect students with faculty for research and academic support. If a student wants to engage in queer and trans research, Maliskey is able to connect them with faculty in the group who do that kind of work.

Another part of the association is the Out List, a voluntary list of currently 25 staff and faculty members who have chosen to openly identify as LGBTQ to amplify the community’s visibility and networking opportunities on campus.

“We all hold different identities,” Maliskey said. “No matter where you’re at, you can find somebody to connect with.”

Visibility has been an essential part of the UND LGBTQ community’s longevity, according to Buri. It’s also helped change minds and create a more tolerant climate on campus for the community.

“When you’re visible you’re not just a number or a statistic anymore,” Buri said. “And people know you and all of a sudden it kind of changes the dynamic, how they think.”

Despite an unclear future for the Pride Center and the LGBTQ community in general, Buri said he maintains hope.

“I think that it’s going to take all of us working together, but I think the future is bright,” Buri said. “We’ll get past whatever obstacles we have and we’ll do OK. We always have.”