ASB has taken it upon themselves to dedicate the month of April to the LGBTQ+ community, however, there is an obvious disconnect between ASB and students regarding their decision to celebrate LGBTQ+ History Month two months early, ASB must utilize their platform to ensure that all LBCC students are being properly represented.
According to LBCC’s website, “ASB is the student voice for over 28,000 LBCC students…”, although ASB does make efforts to make this campus as inclusive, supportive, and overall enjoyable for students; they aren’t fully utilizing their platform in the right way.
The LBCC Student Life Instagram account, @lbccstudentlife, made an Instagram post on April 5th announcing that it was “LGBTQ+ Month”.
LGBTQ+ History Month is actually held in June, commemorating the Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1969.
Jamie Kammerman, the Student Activities Advisor at the LAC, explained that due to lack of staffing in the Office of Student Life during June, ASB wanted to recognize the LGBTQ+ community during the academic year.
ASB is meant to represent the diverse groups of students at LBCC respectfully, but the post did not explain Student Affairs’ reasoning for recognizing LGBTQ+ month, 2 months early.
LBCC should be LGBTQ+ transparent all year round by standing in together with the community and showing their support, June is a month that has so much significance and history for the community, ASB should honor it appropriately.
Inclusiveness is very important and ASB does try to be as inclusive as possible but an act like this, made with good intentions can easily be found offensive.
ASB is quite active on Instagram and Facebook by posting semi-regular updates on events that have already happen on campus, it would probably benefit ASB if they made daily posts instead of the occasional Instagram story.
ASB also has a Twitter account and they haven’t posted anything since June 2017, being that in this day and age many students are social media oriented, so ASB would definitely reach a wider audience if they began to tweet more often.
It is very bold of ASB to claim that they are the voice of LBCC students when there is an obvious disconnect between students involved in ASB and regular students, whether it be through an outlook on extracurricular activities or involvement in campus events.
ASB advocates for inclusiveness and acts as an ally for multiple diverse minority groups, some of their efforts may not have come across how they anticipated but I believe that this issue can be resolved if ASB took advantage of the platform they have, not only on campus but online.
ASB is run by students and is meant for students but they are not benefitting us in any way if they do not utilize their platform to communicate and engage LBCC students.