Student-run Pride Center at the University of Utah looks to fill the gaps left by Utah's anti-DEI law. 

• Courtesy photo
• Ien Zielinski (center) and community members celebrate the launch of a student Pride Center.

Tucked into a corner of the second floor of the University of Utah's Marriott Library, a room brandished with Pride flags and informational posters sits open for U students to visit every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

The Student Pride Center opened this fall as a volunteer-run resource center for students, by students. Located in room N2130, the center is open three days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

"Our mission is to support and empower LGBTQ+ students by offering educational and community resources, advocacy and a safe space where everyone can express their authentic selves," said Ien Zielinski, a senior in chemical engineering.

Zielinski is also the executive director of the Student Pride Center. They spearheaded the center's creation after HB261, an anti-diversity, equity and inclusion bill, was signed into law last winter, impacting the existing resource services on campus.

"We started getting word of HB261, and its implications way back in March. Back then, there was this underlying understanding that the LGBTQ-plus Resource Center [at the U] would probably close," Zielinski said. "Nobody would really say anything, and nobody really knew anything."

Zielinski's understanding was correct. Over the summer, the U closed its LGBT Resource Center alongside the Black Cultural Center and Women's Resource Center. It also closed the Center for Equity and Student Belonging.

The U closed these centers in response to a provision in the new law prohibiting an institution from engaging in or maintaining a policy, practice, office, initiative or the like based on individuals' "personal identity characteristics." Personal identity characteristics are defined in the law as "an individual's race, color, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, religion or gender identity."

Because these campus centers were built to serve certain populations—LGBTQ+, Black and female students—they became violations of HB261.

"I recognize that these changes are difficult," Mitzi Montoya, University of Utah senior vice president for academic affairs, said in a newsletter in June. "However, as this new organization takes shape, I am confident that our students, faculty and staff will continue to receive the personalized support and services they need to thrive and succeed as we foster an ongoing culture of care."

The U created two new resource centers in the aftermath of HB261. The Center for Student Access and Resources was built to provide students with scholarships, training workshops and personalized support. Meanwhile, the Center for Community and Cultural Engagement, which is still awaiting approval by the Utah Board of Higher Education (UBHE), will focus on community engagement and cultural education.

The university does have plans, however, to create a reorganized LGBT Resource Center and Black Cultural Center, pending the Utah Board of Higher Education's approval of the new Center for Community and Cultural Engagement.

Organizing Against Adversity
The U's LGBT Resource Center announced its closure via Instagram. Comments on the post were flooded with statements of support for the work the center did and disappointment over its closure.

"Thank you for all the hard work. I am sad to see this change," one comment read.

Another comment: "[I] can't believe I'm in a place where this can happen."

Zielinski saw the effects of the center's closure, too. They said the closures, and their effect on other affinity groups at the U, "sends a message of intolerance, both to new and existing and prospective students at the U," Zielinski said. "It, in all honesty, paves the way for people who previously had bad opinions to make their bad opinions more public. It shows that we are tolerating discrimination. We are tolerating people being unkind."

But while HB261 has led to the breakdown of these resource centers, Zielinski said they've also seen people come together to fight the bill and create new safe spaces for marginalized students.

"People are willing and have been coming together in ways that I don't think we've seen previously," Zielinski observed, adding that it's felt "really empowering, and it's been very validating in what I'm doing."

Though it's been motivational to see people come together to form organizations like the Student Pride Center, Utah Pride Center executive director Chad Call explained how bills like HB261 put marginalized people in positions to create spaces for themselves.

"I think it's really important to recognize what [Zielinski] is talking about with our community that is coming together and filling the gaps where they shouldn't need to have to fill the gaps, but they are, inevitably," Call said. "It's what queer people have done forever, and it's something that's really inspiring to see."

Student Pride Center
Once it was clear the LGBT Resource Center would close, Zielinski quickly got to work organizing a new resource center for LGBTQ+ students.

"My concept was a student-run resource center somewhere, doing something for some amount of time, which was very vague," they explained. "So, I started just sending out things left and right. The volunteers started with five friends who I texted, and I was like, 'you're never going to guess what I have in store for you.' But from there, we started actually forming the center into what it is today."

The center was initially built on resources Zielinski already had at their disposal. They secured a room in the library because they had a friend who worked there. The center's initial promotional materials were created by friends who knew how to design. But eventually, Zielinski needed funding.

So they reached out to the Utah Pride Center for support.

"From there, once I reached out to them, things really started to take shape," Zielinski said. "[The center] kind of stopped being a little basement garage project and started to actually become something."

The Student Pride Center functions as a campus-based chapter of the Utah Pride Center. Although it operates out of a room on the U's campus, the center is not affiliated or associated with the U administration in any way.

That's how it's able to serve LGBTQ+ students without violating HB261.

Volunteers at the center, of which there are now numbering more than 30, all receive training in reporting.

That means that if a student comes in and reports discrimination or harassment, volunteers at the center can confidentially connect the student to resources, help them report any issues they're facing and act as an advocate for them in the process.

Beyond that, the center also connects students to resources through referrals.

"I think that's oftentimes a service that maybe goes overlooked but is actually pretty critical—the students know that there's a place they can come to for finding accessible health care, homelessness [services]," Call explained. "A gamut of things that people are looking for—the Center serves as that hub for them."

And even if a student is just looking for a place to do homework or connect with friends, the center provides that space for them, too.

"There's been a lot of people who just want a place where they can still go, and they can know that they'll be accepted," Zielinski emphasized. "They can know that they will have somewhere comfortable, somewhere safe—somewhere they feel a sense of belonging."