Queer Student Alliance welcomes Tori Cooper for keynote address

Whether it’s terms like transgender or nonbinary or the outside of a condiment jar, Tori Cooper says labels can be helpful to a certain extent. 

“Horseradish looks just like mayonnaise, so a label is good because it helps you differentiate between them,” Cooper told a crowd at Common Grounds Coffeehouse on Tuesday night. 

“There can be a great place for labels or it can be incredibly limiting,” she added. “A label you use today may not apply tomorrow, or three years from now, or graduate school or as you start a family.” 

Cooper, a Black transgender woman who serves as director of community engagement for the Human Rights Campaign’s Transgender Justice Initiative, spoke at EMU’s LGBTQ+ History Month keynote. As a member of the President’s Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS, she is the second-highest ranking transgender woman in the U.S. government. 

The health and equity advocate told the gathering of 135 people about the history of the transgender community. She discussed key definitions of gender and transgender identity and reviewed anti-LGBTQ+ legislation being introduced.

Cooper said it was especially important for her to provide a historic context for transgender identity, as she presented slides of some historical figures who would have identified as transgender.

“Trans is not new,” she said. “It just might be new to some of you.”

The event not only attracted students from EMU but also from other colleges and universities throughout the region. Following her presentation, Cooper engaged in a fireside chat with nine EMU students who shared their experiences of living with queer or transgender identities. 

One of those students, Sarah Peak, a junior, spoke about how she had fought a losing battle trying to turn the Queer Student Alliance at her high school into a school-sanctioned club. 

“Every single time we applied for it, we were denied,” she said. “That just goes to show you that even though you’re … allowing students to voice themselves, we’re still severely restricted in schools in what we can do and what we can say.”

Many of the students participating in the small-group discussion spoke positively about how EMU embraced who they are. 

Riley Quezada, a senior on the leadership team for the EMU Queer Student Alliance, said they did not come out until their first year on campus. But once they did and expressed their preferred pronouns, they felt like a different person.

“I wasn’t someone who was closed-off and unapproachable,” Quezada said. “I am now more approachable and I am now more of myself.”

Dawn Neil, coordinator for the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, celebrated the event’s success.

“The support that we got from the community, from our students, from faculty and staff that were here, it was very inspiring,” she said. 

Neil reached out to Cooper about a year ago and explained how EMU supported its students. Hearing about that support convinced her to speak, Neil said.

“Tori was impressed with how students’ voices are listened to on campus and with what was going on with the transition from Safe Space to QSA,” Neil said.

The EMU QSA, recently renamed from Safe Space, is a group for empowering queer voices and LGBTQ+ activism on campus. This is the second time the office of DEI and QSA has hosted a keynote speaker in recognition of October as LGBTQ+ History Month. 

“This is our first big event with the new name and new leadership, but with the same spirit,” Quezada said.