In the two years since it was founded, the LGBTQ Student Wellbeing Fund has been making a difference all around Fordham—supporting events, services, classes, and faculty initiatives that make Fordham more welcoming to students of all genders and identities.
The fund dovetails with one of the key priorities of Fordham’s recent fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, with its emphasis on equity and inclusion as well as the wellness of every student. Here are five examples of the numerous activities it has made possible:
No. 1: Ignatian Q.
With support from the fund, 10 Fordham students traveled to St. Louis University in April for this annual conference organized by the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities to promote community and spirituality among LGBTQ students. (Fordham hosted Ignatian Q in 2023 with support from the wellbeing fund.) In the words of one Fordham graduate student who attended, Tatum Allen, FCLC ’24, “it offered me a space to feel less alone as a queer person of faith.”
No. 2: Students Together for Acceptance, Respect, and Support (STARS).
Piloted last year by professors and students in the psychology department and the Graduate School of Social Service, this network brings Fordham students together with local high school students seeking to engage with LGBTQ peers, find support, and build community. Two of the high schoolers also took part in a year-long research project on LGBTQ experiences in school and presented their research at the Eastern Psychological Association Conference in Philadelphia.
No. 3: Oral History Project with SAGE Center Bronx.
Last year, undergraduate students in a communications class—titled Photography, Identity, Power—worked with residents of the SAGE center, a community center for LGBTQ seniors, to produce a digital exhibition of their photography that includes an oral history element. Students in an art class, Visual Justice, later met with the seniors and made portrait photographs of them.
No. 4: Queer Prayer Book.
The book Queer Prayer at Fordham was developed in 2023 and distributed at Ignatian Q when it was held at the University.
No. 5: NYC Interfaith Pilgrimage/Retreat
This daylong retreat at the Lincoln Center campus, held in February, centered on art as a way to explore the intersection between spirituality and queerness. About two dozen students and alumni gathered for morning presentations, toured sites important to the LGBTQ community in Greenwich Village, and reconvened on campus to produce their own art.
No. 6: Urban Plunge and Global Outreach Scholarships.
With support from the wellbeing fund, LGBTQ students received scholarships to take part in Urban Plunge and Global Outreach, two programs of the Center for Community Engaged Learning.
Sources: Fordham Campus Ministry, Center for Community Engaged Learning
