A Colgate University official delivered a presentation Tuesday on why Syracuse University should hire him to fill the LGBT Resource Center’s vacant director position.

Khristian Kemp-Delisser, Colgate’s assistant dean and director of LGBTQ initiatives, spoke during an open forum in Crouse-Hinds Hall, detailing how he would run the center.

The former director of the LGBT Resource Center, Tiffany Gray, left SU in the fall to take a job with West Chester University’s LGBTQA Services. After her resignation, Rob Pusch, a former member of the University Senate’s Committee on LGBT Concerns, was appointed interim director of the center.

The university is now searching for Gray’s permanent replacement. Kemp-Delisser was the first of two candidates scheduled to give a presentation to campus community members this week.

“Khristian serves … at Colgate University where they have supported students and guided the office through a period of unrest, student protests and institutional leadership transition,” said Rebecca Reed Kantrowitz, senior vice president and dean of student affairs.

Kemp-Delisser graduated from SU in 2001 and was on campus when the LGBT Resource Center was established. He also received graduate degrees from The University of Vermont, Burlington, where he wrote a dissertation about perceptions of campus climate for queer students of color.

“I come to this as a member of your community, as someone who has been active in trying to shift campus climate around LGBTQ issues for a long time and has made a distinction in my brand and my pattern,” Kemp-Delisser said.

During the forum, Kemp-Delisser presented strategies he used at Colgate, including a “leave-them-alone” technique he described as allowing LGBTQ people of color to create their own spaces.

About 15 people attended the forum, to learn more about what Kemp-Delisser would envision for LGBT student support services at SU.

“I’ve been in a dual-multiplicity space,” Kemp-Delisser said. “It comes out linking my salient identities as a gay man. I came out when I came to college … jumped into pride union. And I had a lot to learn about my racial and ethnic identity.”

Kemp-Delisser said sometimes, resource centers can feel like “white spaces” to queer and transgender students of color, so he decided to find an alternative way to let them assemble.

“Maybe we just don’t ask them to come, maybe we have them meeting at a different place, and we stop pressuring them to come to us,” he said. “That’s what I mean by, ‘leave them alone.’ Students seem to be organizing themselves.”

He said allowing students to create their own spaces yielded positive results at Colgate. The queer and trans students of color on his campus created a GroupMe, he said, a non-university affiliated forum where the students could talk to each other.

Kemp-Delisser is not a member of the QTSOC GroupMe, nor does he feel the need to be, he said. But he said he built alliances across campus with people who are connected in the GroupMe. They gave him updates when necessary, he said.

When questioned by an audience member about how he would be a resource to QTSOCs while “leaving them alone,” he responded that his on-campus allies were the key to maintaining relationships without being too hands on, while at Colgate.

He added that his mission is to make sure every student feels safe on their college campus.

“When I was a college student … I had a goal of stepping foot in every building on campus even if I didn’t have a class there or any reason to be there … I want that to be a goal for every student and every queer student,” Kemp-Delisser said. “I want every student to feel comfortable and included wherever they go, like they can set foot everywhere and not feel like they don’t belong.”

There will be another open forum Thursday at Bird Library to allow LGBT Resource Center director candidate Samuel Neil Byrd to give a presentation.

Published on January 30, 2018 at 11:13 pm

Contact Catherine: ccleffer@syr.edu | @ccleffert