The College of Southern Nevada (CSN) has developed a safe zone program for its LGBT students. The program not only provides students with resources, but also trains faculty and staff on how to help them.

The safe zone program provides designated areas for students to access on campus that have resources or staff trained to help. These places are to be marked with stickers that LGBT students would recognize as safe. This includes the office doors and windows of staff and faculty who sign on with the program as allies.

Students will be able to find out all sorts of information, from the latest LGBT events to where gender-neutral bathrooms are and so much more. 

There are 40,000 students at CSN and the Las Vegas Review-Journal quotes Owen Pillion, a communications professor and chairman of the Queer Inclusive College Committee, as saying it’s reasonable to assume a “decent-sized population” of them identify as LGBT or as allies. 

Pillion also points out that a lack of resources could contribute to LGBT students not feeling comfortable in their classrooms and therefore dropping out. That’s one of the major reasons this program is seen as so important.

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And it’s been years in the making. 

Previously there had been student-led organizations that tried to do some of this work, but progress would always halt when the students moved on from CSN. Pillion was an advisor for one such group, and noting his work the college office of diversity approached him about starting a faculty and staff-run committee – the Queer Inclusive College Committee. Everyone on it identifies as LGBT or as an ally. 

While the committee began by organizing activities and events, the goal was always to do more. The addition of the safe zone program, which many colleges across the country already have, was a logical next move.

Education is everything and it doesn’t stop with the students. Faculty and staff can take a seminar that tackles issues concerning LGBT students, facilitated by the committee. 

The committee hosted its first round of training recently, which 30 people attended. More such workshops will likely occur throughout the year.

The next steps are to generate more student involvement. Pillion says the committee will be reaching out to students to get a new student organization started. With the committee supporting it, this new group will be more likely to survive than those of the past.

Indeed there are all kinds of positive changes coming for CSN’s LGBT population.