Queer Alliance Resource Center

Over the past decades, movements starting from the Free Speech movement in the mid-1960s to recent protests like the United Automobile Workers, or UAW, strike have shown trends of significant differences and similarities that have translated over time.

To be a Hispanic-serving institution, or HSI, at least 25% of a not-for-profit institution’s full-time undergraduates must be Hispanic. Today, 21 of the 23 CSU campuses and six of the nine UC campuses with undergraduate education are HSIs. UC Berkeley, currently, is not.

Situated in the Bay Area — a place renowned for its vibrant LGBTQ+ community — UC Berkeley is home to a significant LGBTQ+ presence of its own.

The Queer Alliance and Resource Center, or QARC, has served as a hub for the queer community at UC Berkeley for decades while offering a range of student-led social, educational and safe-sex programming.

Students walking through Sproul Plaza say they have heard offensive rhetoric from preachers who stand on the edge of campus.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Oct. 6 that gives students, particularly transgender students, at state public universities the ability to have their lived names printed on their diplomas.

UCPD’s email affirming its “allyship” to Queer staff members and students for Pride Month seems utterly performative, and the message ostensibly showcases the way police departments neoliberalize queer spaces.

Underrepresented student groups and organizations, including the community of students with disabilities and Indigenous student organizations, have faced long-standing challenges in their fight for allocated spaces on campus. 

While transgender students on campus have faced obstacles to their safety, many activist groups are supporting the trans community. However, there is more work to be done.

Vera said she saw how institutional gaps on campus affect different communities and realized she wanted to uplift those who were underrepresented.