Mission, Vision, and Values
Our Mission
The mission of the Gender and Sexuality Campus Center is to celebrate, affirm, and support Queer and Trans individuals and communities at Michigan State University. We strive to create a more just and equitable campus for people of all genders and sexualities, centering the voices of Black and Indigenous people of color. We enact this work through advocacy, education, programming, and community-building.
Our Vision
Envisioning a campus free from oppression.
Our Values
Justice
We center the voices and experiences of people with marginalized identities in an effort to build a more just and equitable community. We work to dismantle structures of oppression and advocate for the needs, safety, and wellbeing Queer and Trans Spartans.
Transformation
At the heart of our work is the possibility of growth and development for all people and communities. We believe that change is possible and necessary to achieve a world where we all are free. We believe that another campus, and another world, are possible and we dream that change into being.
Love
We believe we are all connected and all humans are worthy of love, dignity, and respect. We know that love is not possible without justice. Love means lifting each other up and guiding each other because our liberation is intrinsically tied together. We know that our strength comes from collective power. Queer and trans people have survived through mutual aid, humor, and rebellious love. We are committed to love as a verb, as an act of community building and as a proactive ethic for justice-based work. As bell hooks states: “Love is an act of will, both an intention and an action.
Joy
We celebrate Pride in the sincere belief that pleasure is liberating and freedom is possible.The cultivation and sharing of joy is a strategy for resistance and resilience. It is an expression of our commitment to ourselves and one another and. We celebrate our histories and welcome our futures with joy in our hearts.
Intersectionality
We understand intersectionality to be a theory of oppression, first named by Kimberlé Crenshaw. We view our work through an intersectional lens, centering those at the margins of the margins and dismantling oppression through education and connection.We know that oppression is complex and multiple marginalized identities intersect and compound one another to create unique experiences of oppression. We believe that none of us is free until all of us are free. We use the power we have to lift up the voices and visions of those who have been granted less power.
Courage
We must do our work with bravery and honesty, not shying away from necessary conflict. We believe our work requires us to be accountable to all of our communities if we are to succeed. We are creating new possibilities as we go and that takes collective courage. At the very heart of justice is the willingness to tell the truth about what is and to speak into existence what must be. As James Baldwin states: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”