MONDAY, APRIL 24, 1999

Center serves gays

By Sharon Christensen

On-line Forty-Niner

In 1991, a group of gay students walked into the Cal State Long Beach president's office and asked for a space. It was the culmination of a movement meant to legitimize and organize previously unrecognized student groups.

"It wasn't just a queer movement," said Pablo Alvarez, program coordinator assistant for CSULB's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Resource Center. "It was during a time when student activists were demanding space to come together and organize."

The president's office granted the group two tiny adjoining rooms surrounded by faculty offices on the east end of campus. The university provided electricity, empty rooms and phones, said Karla Saldana, the LGBRC's current program coordinator .

"The gay and lesbian student group at the time was a group of strong, powerful, crazy hippies," Saldana said.

The center became not only a resource and research library for such gay-related issues as marriage rights and HIV prevention, it also became a safe haven and family setting for CSULB students, gay, lesbian or otherwise.

"We expose [more than just] issues about our community," said Alvarez. "It's not just specific. We recognize everyone's oppression and we work with that."

The center, which has sponsored lecture series, support groups and last semester's altar to Wyoming hate crime victim Matthew Shepard, is also the meeting place for weekly men's and women's rap meetings, according to Alvarez.

CSULB's gay fraternity, Delta Lambda Phi, works closely with the center and takes advantage of the center's visibility to increase its own membership, said Hector Marquez, fraternity president.

"I came to the center and I saw the flyers," said Marquez, a senior political science and Spanish literature major. "I recognized the Greek letters and I asked about the fraternity."

Saldana, who fills the only paid position at the center, came to the center during her first semester at CSULB.

"The center has helped me with a lot of things, like coming out to my family, coming out further to myself," she said. "In turn, I wanted to help other people coming here for the first time."