This fall, UR’s newest living-learning program welcomes its first group of LGBTQ+ students and their allies to Lakeview Hall.

The Lavender Living Community program accepted 20 rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors and has a dedicated resident advisor. Plans include organizing social gatherings in the residential lounge, cooking monthly communal meals, working on service projects, attending events, and traveling to New York City.

“Our purpose in starting Lavender Living was to create a safe and queer space on campus that is non-academic, values intersectionality, and helps queer people connect,” said Pamira Yanar (they/them), a senior accepted to the community who was on the team that came up with the idea.

Yanar and several classmates were in the long-running will program at UR, which explores social justice and gender issues. Their coursework led to envisioning a new LGBTQ+ living-learning community on campus, and they began conducting interviews with students and staff as well as researching communities at other colleges.

Last year, the group proposed their idea to Andrew Gurka, director of the Center for Student Involvement. He shared it with Casey Butler (they/them), who had just joined the Student Center for Equity and Inclusion as associate director for LGBTQ+ Campus Life.

“Flexible housing or gender-inclusive housing is the gold standard right now for universities,” said Butler, who became the new community’s advisor. “There’s a lot of understanding that students want more options.”

Junior Shay (he/they) is the Lavender Living Community’s RA. “The first day I set foot on this campus, I became aware that there was a need for this type of community,” Shay said. “We deserve to be celebrated and, most importantly, heard.”

LGBTQ+ is an expansive acronym for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning plus” that can also encompass intersex and asexual people. Butler emphasized that opening the Lavender Living Community to allies was important because students didn’t want participation to out someone.

“They can have more autonomy around the disclosure of their identity,” Butler said.

Lavender has multiple meanings. Historically, proponents of the late 19th Century Aestheticism movement in Europe, including poet Oscar Wilde, adopted the color. By the late 1960s, people in the community  used lavender as a symbol of resistance.

“Now we use it in an uplifting, liberating, empowering way,” Butler said.

The itinerary for the Lavender Living Community’s NYC trip in October includes historic sites like Stonewall National Monument in Greenwich Village, where an uprising in 1969 helped spark a national movement for equal rights.

Students in the community see it as a chance to learn from each other, build relationships, create social support, and develop life skills. Active citizenship is also key. Each semester, participants will work on a service project with a local nonprofit. They’ll also go to Richmond for an event such as a play or concert.

“To me, this community means strengthening the queer community on campus, providing a truly inclusive space, being able to learn about our history, and celebrating and honoring it through events and our trip to NYC,” Pamira said.

Multiple departments were proactive partners in creating the themed community, including the Student Affairs Division, New Student and Transition Services within the Center for Student Involvement, and Housing, Butler said.

For example, they explained, typically only RAs have access to the kitchen in Lakeview, but Housing supported extending that to Lavender Living students for monthly communal dinners. Adding a field for gender to the Banner student information system was another shift.

Butler noted that the first Lavender Living Community members are an intersectional group with diverse races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

“We’re seeing more opportunities for us to be inclusive, and to center on our marginalized communities, so we can really take care of everyone,” they said.