This Pride month, I want to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and its many allies at Mount Mercy, a small Catholic university in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I’ve taught English there my entire career. Twenty-seven years! As a Queer elder, I’ve enjoyed witnessing and contributing to the increased visibility of the LGBTQ+ community on campus.

Queer Visibility = Queer Joy!

When I started at Mount Mercy in 1994, it honestly felt like I was the campus’s Queer visibility. Me, my buzz cut, and a little wooden sign on my desk that said OUT. (This sign, which I still have, is meant to indicate my openness, not my desire for students to leave my office.)

Over the years, Queer visibility at Mount Mercy has slowly grown, and the 2021-2022 academic year was the best so far, one that filled me with Queer joy. The year culminated in the first annual Lavender Graduation Ceremony co-sponsored by Mount Mercy’s student Alliance and the Faculty/Staff GSA (Gender and Sexuality Alliance).

I’m going to save this amazing end-of-the-year event for the end of this post. I’ll start with some of the ways Mount Mercy’s students have furthered Queer visibility and culture on campus.

Student Writers and Artists

This Fall, for the first time ever, a student in my creative writing course submitted a story featuring a nonbinary character, and this student asked great editing questions about clearly distinguishing the singular they and the plural they.

Also for the first time, the student newspaper, the Mount Mercy Times, used the singular they to reference nonbinary individuals. The usage appeared in two stories about visiting nonbinary poet Danez Smith (more on this later!), and the other usage was in a feature written by award-winning Editor-in-Chief Jada Veasey (MMU ’22). The article was about an incredibly talented English major, Sierra Earle (MMU ’22).

During their time at Mount Mercy, Sierra published several poems—some of them with Queer content. Two of these poems were published in Lyrical Iowa, an annual anthology published by the Iowa Poetry Association. When Sierra was a junior, their poem placed first in the IPA’s contest for college students!

Sierra also completed a remote internship with Sinister Wisdom, the longest operating lesbian literary journal. Along with handling its social media accounts and organizing its Zoom events, they were also the associate editor for the summer issue of the journal, arranging and formatting the part that features new writing by established lesbian writers such as Chrystos. (The lead editor, V. Wetlaufer, a Lambda-winning poet, recently taught at Mount Mercy and once visited my LGBTQ+ Literature class.)

Sierra did such a fantastic job that once their internship was complete, the journal hired them! Now they also write the Sinister Wisdom newsletter, and they curated the 2023 Sinister Wisdom calendar.

Mount Mercy’s student artists and designers also boosted Queer visibility. Below is the cover of this year’s Paha Review, the university’s undergraduate literary journal. That fun rainbow font is courtesy of cover designer Grace Byers (MMU ’23). The art itself is a sticker created by first-year art student Haley Hartshorne (MMU ’25).

Did this cover generate some controversy? Yes. And then the administration asked the magazine staff to include an artist statement with the cover. You can read Haley’s inspiring statement here. It’s followed by a university statement that champions openness and Mercy hospitality.

To be honest, most of the Queer successes that I’ll describe in this rest of this post faced some push-back, but I’m not going to detail the conflicts. Why? I believe that when you work for visibility and justice, and you are met with opposition or bigotry, you should give the bigotry no more attention than necessary.

(How much is that? Well, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. It’s a Midway issue that I may address in a future post.)

Faculty/Staff GSA

The rest of this post will celebrate the accomplishments of Mount Mercy’s Faculty/Staff GSA. With two colleagues (who have since left the university), I founded our GSA in Fall 2019. We are now some twenty members strong!

Most of our members are allies. The LGBTQ+ community at Mount Mercy is blessed with amazing allies. Beyond the allies in the GSA are many more who don’t have time for more meetings or groups, but who generously offer their support when needed.

One ally who is in the GSA is the Director of Mount Mercy’s Department of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity—Dr. Charles Martin-Stanley.

With the support of DEI, the 2021-2022 year was the most successful one so far for our GSA. The worst of COVID was behind us, and we were ready for action!

Our main goal was to increase Queer visibility on campus, and with the help of many Mount Mercy students, we rocked that goal!

Gabriel Hernandez Acosta (MMU ’16), Assistant Director of Enrollment Operations, created a logo for our GSA, and Danielle Rudd, Associate Professor of Biology, made stickers and pins. The student Alliance kindly let us distribute these at their Rainbow Fest.

Safe Zone and Other Support

Throughout the year, GSA offered support and advice to Professor of Social Work April Dirks, who has long served as Mount Mercy’s Safe Zone trainer. She was busy this year because along with her regularly scheduled sessions, she also led sessions with groups and offices that requested them.

To further support LGBTQ+ students, GSA sent a Letter to the Editor of the Mount Mercy Times. Our letter was in response to anti-transgender laws that had been passed or proposed in Iowa and many other states, and it was signed by nineteen of us.

Thanks to the Times for publishing our letter and for your stellar coverage of LGBTQ+ issues and events on campus!

National Coming Out Day

Mount Mercy enjoyed a glorious National Coming Out Day courtesy of one of our GSA’s most active members—Assistant Professor of Marriage and Family Therapy Heather Morgan-Sowada (MMU ’12). With several of her graduate students who intern at Mount Mercy’s Olson Marriage and Family Therapy Clinic, she created a festive event that featured several fun activities and learning stations.

The slideshow below starts with Heather and her students at a rock painting station. Then there are some of the finished Pride rocks, which Alliance students then placed around campus. You can also see a learning station featuring the gender unicorn and several student-designed identity stickers. After the event, it was fun glimpsing these stickers on student laptops and baseball caps.

Visiting Poet Danez Smith

For Black History Month, Mount Mercy had the great privilege of hosting Danez Smith: a slam champion and the author of three award-winning books, including Don’t Call Us Dead, a finalist for the National Book Award.

Smith’s poetry hums with joyful defiance even as it portrays Black trauma and the challenge of being Poz. As DEI Director Dr. Charles Martin-Stanley said in a Times article by Jenna Welty (MMU ’25), “Smith speaks about anti-racism and non-violence from the perspective of their own intersectional identities.”

Sponsored by DEI and the Cultural Affairs Committee—and heavily promoted by the English Program and the GSA—Smith’s visit included two events, a generative workshop on surreal poetry and a performance followed by a Q&A.

In the photo below, Smith holds a broadside that junior graphic design major Teodora Simovic (MMU ’23) made to commemorate their Mount Mercy visit. The broadside features the opening lines from “summer, somewhere,” the first poem in Don’t Call Us Dead.

For more details on Smith’s Mount Mercy visit, read this reflection by Annie Barkalow (MMU ’23). She was the Managing Editor of the Times last year, and will be its Editor-in-Chief next year. She took all the paper’s photos of the evening event, including the one in the paper below. It captures Smith performing the end of “Dinosaurs in the Hood,” a poem that critiques racism and gun violence as it celebrates Black boys and Black joy.

Lavender Commemoration

The most festive way that the GSA supported students was with Mount Mercy’s first annual Lavender Commemoration: a graduation ceremony for LGBTQ+ students. You can read about the history and significance of lavender graduations here.

The idea to hold a lavender graduation at Mount Mercy came from Assistant Professor of Social Work Melissa McCollister. She and Heather Morgan-Sowada worked tirelessly to create an uplifting celebration.

They inspired lots of people and organizations to help GSA with the event. In the slideshow below, you’ll see the fruits of that help. Mount Mercy’s Alliance applied for the Student Government funds that purchased all the decorations and the lavender pins that each graduate received. Melissa’s partner—Darlene Town (MFA), a freelance graphic designer—brilliantly turned the Mount Mercy Mustang into a rainbow mustang, which was used on promotional posters and the program. Karen Krebs donated drinks, and Great Harvest Bread Co. donated delicious cookies with lavender frosting.

Besides GSA and the student Alliance, other sponsors of the Lavender Commemoration were the Department of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity; the Department of Psychology, Sociology, and Social Work; and The Olson Marriage and Family Therapy Clinic.

The event itself was FABULOUS!

Pride flags lined the sidewalk leading to Mount Mercy’s Graduate Center, and at the door, I was greeted by one of the graduate students in the MFT program—yes! the same great group that helped with National Coming Out Day.

The lobby swarmed with people dressed in lavender and purple. Rainbow tables were staffed by supportive outside organizations: PFLAG of Cedar Rapids, One Iowa, Lavender Legal Center, and CR Pride. You could learn more about these excellent organizations and help yourself to Pride stickers and bracelets.

The tables in the Conference Hall, where the actual ceremony was held, were filled to capacity! Before the ceremony, the crowd enjoyed a beautiful slide show. Made by Melissa, it featured photos of past Mount Mercy Pride events and pictures of the graduates along with their favorite quotes.

Heather did a lovely job as MC. In her welcoming remarks, she explained the need for photo privacy, and she detailed the significance of lavender and lavender graduations. Then there was a moment of silence honoring LGBTQ+ people who have been lost.

Next up were two brilliant keynotes. Megan Mineart (MMU ’22) delivered the student address. Double majoring in Political Science and Social Work, Megan was a two-term president of Mount Mercy’s Alliance. She garnered several laughs as she offered advice to LGBTQ+ college students

Aime Wichtendahl (MMC ’05) gave the alum address. While at Mount Mercy, Aime double majored in Political Science and Journalism, and she served as the editor of the Times. In 2012, her first novel, The Butterfly and the Flame, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. In 2015, Aime was elected to the Hiawatha City Council, becoming the first openly trans woman elected to government in the state of Iowa. Talk about Mount Mercy Pride!

Aime described a moment before her transition when she was watching her son (now 17) play. The contrast between his joy and her own misery was so stark that it made her realize she needed to make a change. Her change indeed brought her happiness, and she has come to realize this: one effective way that the LGBTQ+ community can resist queerphobia is by protecting and nurturing our own happiness.

After the speeches, student Sophie Johnson sang Andra Day’s “Rise Up.” As I sat next to my partner and friends, listening to the soaring refrain, ASL interpreter Joan Locke gracefully swayed to the melody. The slide show kept playing, showing one joyful LGBTQ+ graduate after another.

I’m not crying, you’re crying. Heather and Melissa had even thought to place Kleenex on the tables.

The happy tears kept flowing as the pinning began. Heather announced each graduate’s name—seventeen of them for this inaugural ceremony!—and Melissa gave each of them a lavender pin that they could wear at Mount Mercy’s official Commencement. Each graduate had their photo taken. Each was beaming, cheered on by their families, friends, beloveds, and mentors.

Most of the crowd lingered long after the pinning. We congratulated the graduates; we posed in front of the rainbow “photo booth;” we savored cake, cookies and conversation. We met new people; we built community. The Lavender Commemoration was the feel-good event of the year. #mmuPRIDE

As with any post on this blog, the opinions are my own; they do not reflect the opinion of Mount Mercy University, its Administration, or Board.