News

Sager fund turns 20 with 'Boundaries of Queer'

In print | March 27, 2008

This weekend, the annual Sager Symposium returns to campus with a schedule of nine events ranging from the workshop “The Gender-Free Orgasm” to the lecture “Dancing with Death: Black Queer Identities and Popular Music in the age of HIV/AIDS.” The 2008 Symposium is especially notable because it marks the 20th anniversary of the Sager Fund, which was started in 1988 by Richard Sager ’73.

Staying true to this year’s theme of “The Boundaries of Queer,” the symposium explores the existence or lack thereof of the racial, sexual, cultural and political lines often drawn when discussing queer issues. The theme came about from the Symposium Committee’s desire to examine the definition of queer.

“When we were throwing out ideas at the beginning about what we wanted the Symposium to be about, we asked ourselves in the queer community what it means to be queer,” Symposium Committee co-head Tatiana Cozzarelli ‘08 said. "There is a political element [to being queer] — can you be queer and straight? Is being queer all about your desires — is it about who you desire and what you desire? And where do politics fit in? So the theme came out of that. What are the boundaries of queer and what does queer mean? How do gender, sexuality, race and class intersect, and can they all fit into the word ’queer?’"

Pulling from Every Edge of Campus

As has been the case in recent years, the committee organizing the Sager Symposium is comprised entirely of students. That is not to say, however, that they are alone in their efforts to plan the symposium. Rather, they have received help from various administrative offices, academic departments and student groups on campus. The symposium is co-sponsored by a total of 25 such offices and organizations at Swarthmore. While the Sager Fund gives significant financial backing to the symposium, the symposium also receives additional funds from some of its co-sponsors.

The diversity of the co-sponsors, which includes groups such as the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Swarthmore Queer Union, hint at the multifaceted appeal of this year’s symposium. Efforts have also been made to bring in speakers that interest different parts of campus.

According to Cozzarelli, the diversity of the Sager’s co-sponsors and speakers is key to the Symposium. “In terms of our speakers’ cultural groups, we have one black, two South Asians, two Latinos, some whites, one transsexual and some people who are both female and male identified. We really have a diverse group of speakers, so we can go to all the cultural groups and say, ‘Queer identities and queer people are in your cultures, and here are a group of people who can speak to that,’” Cozzarelli said.

Changes through the Decades

The 2008 Sager Symposium also marks the 20th anniversary of the Sager Fund and the 19th anniversary of its related Symposium. According to Cozzarelli, gender and sexuality issues were rarely discussed at the time of the Fund’s inception.

“Twenty years ago, Sager was the only one of its kind talking about LGBT issues and funded by a major institution. At that time, engaging in gay sex was still illegal in a lot of states. In that time, people were not really talking about LGBT issues, especially in institutionalized ways,” Cozzarelli said.

While the anniversary lends itself to discussion about the progress that Swarthmore and the nation has made on queer issues in the past two decades, it also opens up debate about the amount of ground that still needs to be covered.

Both Cozzarelli and fellow Symposium Committee co-head Matthew Armstead ’08, for instances, would like to see a greater integration of queer issues into the academic side of Swarthmore. According to Cozzarelli, the college needs more classes on queer issues and increased efforts to hire queer faculty.

Armstead echoed Cozzarelli’s concerns. “There is no central curriculum for queer studies on campus,” he said.

Alumni Outreach

To reflect the changes that have occurred in the past 20 years, both on the college campus and in the country, this year’s Symposium will once again include a dinner with an alumni panel discussing the participants’ experiences as queer students at Swarthmore in the past. According to Cozzarelli, the panel will include alums from as far back as the 1960s to as recent as the current decade. Utilizing Swarthmore’s alumni resources have been a key goal for the Symposium Committee this year.

“We made a huge effort to reach out to alums. We started this last year, and I think it goes along with this idea of commemorating the past and of remembering our history, of remembering queer people on campus,” Cozzarelli said.

Armstead said that it has often been difficult to connect with alumni in the queer community. “The Sager Symposium is not only an event, but also a queer alumni reunion,” he said. “It is there not only for alumni and students to network, but for them to see how their experiences after graduation are affected by their Swarthmore experience. It gives people context for queer life at Swarthmore and its evolution.”

One such alum is Katrina Clark ‘03. Clark, who will be participating on the alumni panel, recalls Swarthmore’s attitude towards queer issues while she was a student at the college.

“On the one hand, I would say that Swarthmore was a little more liberal than the country, in a sense, in terms of being willing to talk about the issues,” she said. “But there was definitely a denial of some of the things that went on, of kind of wanting to brush things under the carpet.”

Clark particularly recalled several hate crimes that occurred during her first year at Swarthmore. “There was an incident that happened on the end of my hall in Mertz where one student was deliberately called a name on a bathroom wall,” she said. “The hallmate was harassed and followed on campus. When we went to the deans about it, it seemed like they didn’t necessarily want to get involved.”

According to Clark, the deans then told them that they didn’t feel as if anything too severe had occurred. “My hallmate’s girlfriend’s boards [on her door] got burned. What exactly has to happen for you to feel that something serious is happening?” Clark asked.

Clark took two years off between her sophomore and junior years of college, and she remembers that noticeable changes occurred during these times. “Over the entire six year period, there were definitely changes,” she said. “Just the number of people who were out increased. People of color who were out were greatly increased. I didn’t feel like there was anyone else my freshman year. Sophomore year there were a few more, and when I came back my junior year, I felt like there was a community of people.”

By lending her voice to the alumni panel, Clark hopes to gives students a broader outlook on queer issues. “I think perspective is really important … When you’re living at Swarthmore, people always describe it as living in bubble. It’s hard to see things on a continuum of time, and it feels like everything’s big right then and right there. Stepping back and seeing things on a timeline gives a perspective that helps guide you,” she said.

Genderfuck — Ending with a Bang

Perhaps the most widely anticipated component of the Symposium is the Genderfuck party that closes the weekend. Originally named Genderfuck because of Sager’s aim to raise questions about the concept of gender and its constraints, the party has since grown into an infamous Swarthmore tradition and has deviated a bit from its original intent.

“The idea is that men wear women’s clothes and women wear mens’ clothes. But it’s a Genderfuck party, not a ‘boys wear dress, girls wear less’ party. It goes along with this idea of queerness, and of transgressing the boundaries of how you perform your gender,” Cozzarelli said.

According to Armstead, in the past there was “almost always a celebratory party attached to the Sager Symposium” that, at times when faculty organized the Symposium, often took place at their homes. However, the Genderfuck component to the party has not always been an element of the celebration.

As with last year, Genderfuck will be spread out across three separate parties in Olde Club, DU and the WRC. Tying into the overall theme for the Symposium, the theme for the party this year is “Sex Through the Ages.”

“We wanted to have something that gibed with the theme of the Symposium. We thought about boundaries of time and boundaries of place. You can go from the past to the present to the future in one evening by traveling to three parties,” Party Committee co-head Andrew Owens ’08 said.

Owens described the three sites of the party as encompassing sex in the past, present and future. DU will represent the ancient world while Olde Club will highlight the iconic sex scenes currently around the world. The WRC will look into the future with visions of how sex may be portrayed decades or centuries from now.

“The first floor of Olde Club will have a darker, Eastern European theme. The lower level will be red light district themed,” Owens said.

Owens also stressed the versatility of the party, saying that it should be enjoyable for everyone at the college, whether or not they wish to adhere to the unofficial and infamous rule of “guys wear dress, girls wear less.”

“I’ve been here three years, I think the party is a lot of fun no matter what you come in,” Owens said. “I’ve always had fun with it. There will be some people going very wild and some who are not. I think this speaks to the Swarthmore ethos in general of being what you’re comfortable with. We want everyone to come and have fun.”