Sarah Chadwell had more to worry about than just what to pack for studying abroad in Italy last summer. She was also concerned about how people would react when they discovered she was a lesbian.
Chadwell, a fifth year senior studying global studies, took Italian classes and was an intern with United Nations Educational Scientific Cultural Organization while in Florence and was apprehensive about how her roommates and colleagues would react due to the influence of the Catholic Church in Italy.
“I was worried about what all could happen,” Chadwell said. “I took off all the gay promotion stickers that were on my laptop.”
However, by the third week, she became a lot more comfortable when she started her internship and found out her boss was gay.
Chadwell found that most people she met just asked a lot of questions about what it was like identifying as an LGBT person.
“Everyone just seemed to be really curious about it,” Chadwell said. “They weren’t really sure what being a lesbian was or what it was like.”
She had to figure out her study abroad plans on her own because the LGBT Center was without a director last year.
Delfin Bautista, the new director of the LGBT Center, and Sarah Jenkins, program coordinator for the LGBT Center and the Women’s Center, have made international travel safety and welcoming international students a priority of the center this year. An international student coffee hour held at the LGBT Center on Monday evening was the first step in realizing these goals.
“We want to be more actively inclusive with international students,” Jenkins said. “It’s really important that all sorts of people feel comfortable and we aren’t just marketing to the mainstream groups.”
Megan Villegas, graduate assistant at the LGBT Center and a master’s student in the College Student Personnel program, said when she came to Ohio University in 2006 there wasn’t a very prominent international student population.
“Now all the departments seem to be playing catch up because the population is here now but it wasn’t before,” Villegas said.
Bautista said the new goal is to connect people and make connections between international and domestic students.
While some countries have laws condemning LGBT people, it’s not all doom and gloom if you travel abroad, Bautista said.
“Some places celebrate LGBT folks more than the U.S. does,” Jenkins said.
The center is about giving students the resources to travel abroad and make them mindful of potential situations they could run into.
“We don’t want people to be paranoid,” Bautista said. “Sometimes LGBT doesn’t translate in different languages.”
@sophie_mitchem
sm559111@ohiou.edu
