Lavender Lounge opens as another safe zone for LBGTQ+ students »

With the quick snip of scissors, a purple ribbon split and gently fell to the floor. Thus began the grand opening of the Lavender Lounge, a new resource space for Radford University's LBGTQ+ community.

"This space will serve as another resource for our students to hang out and have the resources they need," said Center for Diversity and Inclusion Director (CDI) Shannon Shastry at the lounge's ribbon-cutting ceremony on April 18.

Housed inside the university's Center for Diversity & Inclusion office, the Lavender Lounge is a comfortable space equipped with a small sofa, a couple of bean bag chairs, a table, a bookshelf, board games and artwork from Radford's Graduate Art Student Association. A small welcoming neon sign above the sofa reads, in purple cursive letters, "Lavender Lounge."

The lounge is the brainchild of Center for Diversity and Inclusion (CDI) graduate assistant Dee Dee Jeffress '23, a second-year graduate student in the Master of Science in Strategic Communication program from Halifax County, Virginia. The CDI, Jeffress said, "is for students to come in and hang out, and we wanted to extend that to the LGBTQ+ community. We want them to feel welcome and to have a safe space here."

The Lavender Lounge is a permanent space inside the CDI office in Heth Hall. It's intended to complement the Safe Zone office, located on the fourth floor of Hemphill Hall. The office is an extension of the Safe Zone program that has been active at Radford University since the early 2000s, said Michele Ren, a professor of English who is one of four Radford faculty and staff members who operate the office.

"Safe Zone trains members of the Radford University community to provide safe spaces for our LGBTQ+ students, faculty and staff," said Ren, who also teaches in the university's Women's and Gender Studies program. "The office space itself has served as a resource and/or a safe haven for LGBTQ+ students and those who are committed to ensuring their inclusion and safety."

The Safe Zone office offers Level 1 training on D2L and Level 2 workshops in person to the university community. In the 2023-2024 academic year, the office trained groups from Residential Life, the College of Graduate Studies and the Master of Occupational Therapy program, Ren explained, in addition to general trainings during Our Turn and for The GLSEN Day of (no) Silence. Trainers include Radford faculty and student volunteers, plus graduate and undergraduate interns and work study students.

"When members of the university community complete their Level 2 training," Ren noted, "we add them to a listserv and have them go to the Safe Zone office to choose their Safe Zone stickers."

In addition to Radford faculty and staff, the Safe Zone office is staffed by work study students and interns from the Department of English and the Women's and Gender Studies program.

Shastry sees the Lavender Lounge as an extension of the services and support provided by the Safe Zone office, which is why she and Jeffress sought input from students, asking what they wanted to see in the lounge, right down to the naming of the space.

"Dee Dee's job in the CDI focuses on LGBTQ+ initiatives," Shastry explained, "and she's worked very hard to get input from students to see what they wanted. And they really responded, not just for themselves, but for the needs of other students, too."

As for the name, "I originally thought of some names, but those didn't really get positive responses," Shastry confessed with a laugh. "So, we asked for input from the students who were going to use the space. They came up with Lavender Lounge, and I thought it was just perfect."