New Brave Zone Plus sessions to increase inclusivity on campus

By Angelica Fraine ’23, staff writer

A sense of community and belonging is a crucial part of the college experience, and new additions to LVC’s Brave Zone training—known as Brave Zone Plus—will aid in the creation of a campus environment where students of all identities feel included.

“Brave Zone 101 is meant to be the absolute basics we believe everybody on campus needs to understand and respect all members of the [LGBTQ+] community,” Dr. Liz Sterner, associate professor of chemistry and Brave Zone organizer, said. “The Brave Zone Plus are additional sessions that are going to be more focused, deeper dives on special topics.”

Sterner explained the idea is to first attend a Brave Zone 101 training session to obtain the basic knowledge that can then be built up by attending the Plus sessions. The first of these to be held is the Brave Zone Plus session regarding trans and nonbinary identities.

“The trans and nonbinary identities, in particular, came out of the fact that over the last couple years of doing Brave Zone sessions, we’ve noticed that a lot of folks seem pretty comfortable with the ‘L’, the ‘G’ and the ‘B’ of the acronym, but it’s the identities portions where we get a lot of questions,” Sterner said.

The session so far seeks to cover topics such as how to ask another their pronouns, how one might go about correcting someone who has misgendered another and how to set norms in a workspace or classroom to create a space that allows all occupants to be respected, safe and free to be who they are.

“I wanted to make that Brave Zone Plus session first to address what I see as that need, so that folks kind of have an understanding of the vocabulary, how we think about identity, and some tools for maybe reflecting on their own identity and maybe discovering some things about themself,” Sterner said.

To build these tools, Brave Zone organizers are asking any of LVC’s trans and nonbinary members who are comfortable doing so to suggest any training materials that may benefit these Plus sessions. Students can submit their responses via email to either Dr. Sterner or Dr. Holly Wendt or complete the anonymous survey sent to students’ LVC emails.