Female:	Good afternoon. Oy. Up here. Good afternoon folks. I want to welcome you to Research Plus Pizza, which is a lunchtime series that is brought to you by the University of Texas Libraries and that features research presentations by faculty from across the university and pizza, almost all gone now, courtesy of generous program supporter, Austin's Pizza. 
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	Let's see. So, a lot of people work on these programs. We've got our presenter, and then we've got a lot of people throughout the UT libraries who make it all happen. A bunch of them are standing over here, or working busily over by the sound device or by the pizza, now empty pizza boxes. Took a lot of people to put this on and we really appreciate their efforts, and there's a lot of people in the libraries who you need to check out including, if you're interested in more information on this topic, the Social Sciences Liaison Librarian, Carolyn Cunningham. 
Carolyn:	Thank you. My name is Carolyn Cunningham, I'm the Social Science Liaison Librarian for Human Development and Family Sciences, Kinesiology and Healthy Education, Psychology, Social Work, and Sociology here at PCL, and you can see other things up on the screen. 
	I'm very pleased to introduce you to today's speaker, Dr. Steven Russell. Dr. Russell wears many hats. He is the Priscilla Pond Flawn Regent's professor in Child Development and Chair of The Department of Human Development and Family Sciences. He has been named a fellow of The National Council on Family Relations, a non-profit, professional association focused on family research. He serves on the board of directors of The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the Unite States. He also works with the UT Department of Sociology and The Population Research Center. His research focused on adolescent development, with an emphasis on adolescent sexuality, LGBT youth, and parent adolescent relationships. 
	Much of his research is guided by a commitment to create social change to support healthy adolescent development. I'm looking forward to today's talk about research on issues affecting LGBT youth and school policies that address them. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Russell. (applause) 
Dr. Russell:	Thank you. Thanks so much. Thanks for being here today. The most important thing we have these days is time and energy, so I appreciate that you're here. Oh, were you taking care of it for me? Okay. Now we're [inaudible 00:03:35], perfect, I'll switch over. I got it. So, thanks for the great introduction and for all of you for coming, really. I appreciate it. 
	I'm Steven Russell and really glad to talk about what I'm going to present today is sort of a synthesis, an overview of the last really two decades or 15 years of my work and the work of a lot of other people trying to understand the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ young people, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning young people, but also especially in the talk today, focusing on the policies, programs, and practices that make a difference in schools to support kids and their wellbeing. 
	Most of my focus is on secondary schools, meaning like high school, junior high and high school, but I think there's actually less research on the college climate for LGBTQ students, but I think much of what I talk about, much of the strategies and policy approaches are relevant for thinking about even a university even like ours. 
	I think that the big context for me is that there's been, I think it's fair to say, it's really, it's a fascinating time to begin this talk today even, right, holy cow. It's an amazing time and there, in our lifetimes, we have seen social change like sort of never before, especially with respect to understanding, valuing, and including LGBTQ people in the world, in our society, at least so far, and there has been dramatic shift in public acceptance, public understanding of LGBTQ people in lives. It's really, it is hard for younger, it's hard to even imagine how much has changed in just one generation. From 25 years ago, when the notion of legal marriage was absolutely unthinkable to now, where it is what it is. 
	We also know it for young people then, LGBTQ young people are coming out at younger ages than ever before and coming out in the environments that used to not even, that historically have not ever had LGBTQ people in them, like schools, faith communities, families. It just wasn't something that was part of everyday family life or every day school life. So, it's been an amazing time. 
	One of the things that, the kinds of questions that I get asked a lot, is like, aren't things better, I got asked that a lot just recently. But, 'cause I think there's a lot of question mark about what the next several years are gonna mean, some of you might have read The Chronical of Higher Education yesterday, that The Higher Education Task Force headed by the President Jerry Falwell Junior, president of Liberty University, which I think has very direct, explicit implications for thinking about inclusion in higher education, probably, perhaps. 
	People ask me, people have asked me this question, I think, if things are so much better, sort of objectively, how come there's still so much focus on the bad news? Why are we still, you know, why is there focus on the problems? Then, so ultimately, you know, the focus of my research has been what schools can do about it. I'm not gonna spend time today, although, you know in my research lab, we meet at five o'clock on Tuesdays in the C building, come down if you're interested, everybody's welcome all the time. But, in my research lab we ask these bigger questions about LGBTQ youth and adult health and wellbeing, but today I'm just really gonna focus on the schools, but I'm plugging my ... the new book, which just came out last fall on sexual orientation and gender identity in schooling and my talk today sort of summarizes that work. 
	I grew up in the south, and my dad is a minister and his dad was a minister and I can't tell a short story, but I'm gonna try today, and I encourage you, there will be ... I'm gonna talk about three big things that schools and institutions can do to support LGBTQ young people, that the research is very, now very persuasive about and so I welcome your questions and each one of them, I'm gonna kind of bounce along the top of the summary of what we understand, but we could dive deeper into any one of them. 
	Again, you can always come to my lab meeting and join my research team, which is a great group of people, some of whom are in the front row, or in the fifth row, or in the back row, so thank you. 
	What makes a difference? What makes a difference for supporting LGBTQ young people in schools, and again, I'm thinking about secondary schools? You know, the conclusion is, the end of the story is that there are several school strategies or policies, practices, and approaches that are linked to student safety and lower peer discrimination. 
	I frame these as sort of a triangle, inclusive policies at the base. Inclusive policies, which provide the authority and context for other kinds of school practices like proactive intervention that might happen in schools, where teachers and administrators do things that create a positive climate for students, and then ultimately visibility in inclusion, which I will describe each one. 
	As I go, I might also say ... I never also keep track of my own notes. As I go, I would like to, I'm gonna present to you, I'm presenting the meta stuff, like sort of the big picture, but I'm gonna dive deep into two specific new studies that aren't yet, that are under review but not yet published. So, don't tweet it, or if you wouldn't mind, because they're in review right now so it's like hot, not even off the press, it's hot in the press right now. So, I'm kinda serious because I think this work is, the work is, you know, it's not done yet and it's a political world that we live in. So, anyways, this is between us in a big ole' room in a library.
	The first thing is inclusive policies, which I've argued and you know, I can refer you to my research and things to read if you're interested in reading, which I hope you still are, is the notion of policy enumeration, which means explicitly including in policies in state, federal, not yet, state and local district, school district and local school laws and policies, explicitly including actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity or expression in a policy framework. So, the way that we in some cases, what we're thinking about is non-discrimination, and anti-bullying laws and policies. 
	There's a big diversity across the United States in how those are implemented. There is not any federal education protection based on sexual orientation and gender identity. There are some interesting things that the Obama administration did that sort of approximated that, but there are no,  The Student Non-Discrimination Act and The Safe Schools Act, two federal laws have been proposed again and again and have languished for the last eight years, right, so we don't have federal protection. Two thirds of states in the United States do not have legal protection in education for sexual orientation and gender identity or for LGBTQ people. 
	Texas is one of those states that does not have legal protection. But, a third do, so that's some good news. But, there is a strong, there's strong evidence that this matters and I'm really focusing here on the big, capital P laws and policies, but there are many other kinds of policies that are enacted at state and local and school and even classroom levels that make a difference for students and I want to acknowledge we could have a much longer conversation for people that for example, might go into the field of education, like what is little P policy, what are the kind of little things we can do in the short term before we have a state law in Texas that protects all students. 
	What the research shows us pretty clearly is that there's consistent evidence that enumerated policies make a difference and the exciting thing about the last five years is that evidence has emerged at that, is at multiple levels. So, we know from studies of students, like surveys of students, that when they say they have inclusive policies in their schools, they feel safer, their achievement is better. We know from, if we ask a student, they say they you know, it's better for them. 
	What's kind of emerged more recently and that I think is you know, equally and additionally, differently exciting is that we have evidence comparing differences in school, so the rates of things like suicidal behavior for LGBTQ for students are lower in schools that have enumerated policies. An important study by my colleague and collaborator at Colombia, [inaudible 00:12:51] [Bueller 00:12:51], and then we also see in one study so far differences across states based on whether they have inclusive and enumerated policies. This is from the Glisten National School Climate Survey of LGBTQ students across the country and so basically, students that live in states that have those laws, they weren't asked about whether they had a law, it was just where the state they came from and the student said that, on average, if you lived in a state that had laws, you reported feeling safer, less harassment and fewer bias remarks. 
	Oh, yes, this is, oh it is in the right order. This is the like, it's not done yet and Amanda is in the front row, is one of the leaders on this project as a Ph.D. student and think of that image at the front of the, on the poster of the bathrooms because this has been a, this is the thing right now that we're dealing with, this trend is bathroom access and I should have said that before I showed you the slide. 
	We have data from, we actually, it's interesting, the bathroom issue came up and surprised a lot of us. We hadn't been asking questions about bathrooms on our social behavior research. We don't have any research on schools that have or do not have bathroom policies, because that sort of came from you know, the right side and Lewis you know, hit us in the knees before we were anticipating it. 
	But, we did several years ago add to a large study, one of the largest community sample of transgender young people in the United States right now, do we know? 129, as part of a larger study of LGB youth. We asked trans youth, youth that identified as trans if they were able to use their preferred name, their chosen name in school, at work, among friends and at home? What this slide simply shows you is the sum of the context where they're able to use their chosen name, their preferred name, so that the darker is the kids, the young people who said that they could use their chosen name in all four contexts, family, home, school, friends and zero to one meaning like, only one, none of those places or only one. 
	What you can see across this just, this is just mental health, severe depression, suicide ideations, suicidal behavior, that there's a really powerful association between mental health, between better mental health and ability to use ones chosen name and so, I think this is really important and it's under review right now at kind of a big deal kind of place, so I hope that you'll hear about it soon when it gets published, but don't take a picture of this slide because it's not done yet. 
	I think this is a really persuasive evidence for the kinds of things that would be the structural, so this is you know, where I was headed for this actually to tell you, this is another long side story, but you know, schools have lots of policies with regard to things like school IDs. Schools have lots of, there are no regulations about what, I mean there are no, there are few regulations about how schools make decisions about what name gets represented on a student identification for example. So, there are schools that are allowing students to choose a different name for their public identification card and at many schools, if you've got a teenager in your life, you might, some schools that you wear them around, on a lanyard around your neck literally, it's like there in front of everybody that you know, and imagine what it would mean if we could have our chosen gender expression and name in that setting if you were a teenager. 
	Okay, but here's the problem. The challenge with inclusive, with focusing only on policies, well the challenge right now is that we can't seem to get anything out of the federal government in the last eight years anyway. But, enumerated policies clearly provide students with an understanding of their rights and they say that they feel safer. They provide faculty and administrators with tools to implement. When you have an inclusive policy, you're much more likely to say, we don't do this harassment and bullying in this classroom because you're not worried, you know that your administrator has your back. 
	The daily experiences of harassment and support are more strongly linked to wellbeing and the number of studies have shown this, that essentially policies matter, but as soon as you ask, as soon as you take into account how is your day? Did you experience discrimination, are people kind to you at school? Those effects are stronger in terms of students' wellbeing and the effects of policies .
	It's important that we bump to the next level and get to the more proximal, what's going on in the everyday lives of students. I think of policies as a first step, you know, to provide a basis. 
	The second sort of global area I describe as proactive intervention and this is just the no brainer stuff, but that we actually have to think, we have to be intentional about in schools. For 15 years ago, I published data from a national study that showed that supportive faculty and staff were one of the strongest protective factors for LGBTQ students and their academic success and mental health in schools. Having that teacher that you know you can go to, knowing that there's a place where you can get information and support and you know, not surprising, it's completely, this is when the sociologists must discover the obvious, but that you know, students feel safer and do better in school when faculty intervene in harassment. 
	It seems so easy for us in a university setting like this to say like, people should intervene in harassment, it's so easy. I mean it's so completely obvious, right? But it's not, it's complicated. It's nuanced. It's difficult for teachers every day to figure out how do you manage a classroom of growing number of students in your, what if you have 30 students in a classroom? What if somebody's making a joke? What if you don't know if you say, what did you just say? Let's have a teaching moment about what you just said. You just said "that's so gay." That's not okay, let's talk about why you said that. Where did that come from and who could that undermine in the classroom? 
	If you think you're gonna get an angry call from your principal or a parent, you might just be willing to say, I gotta get through this math lesson, you know? We hear that a lot. I mean, we've heard that a lot from teachers and there's some good research on teachers that shows that teachers are much more likely to intervene in harassment when they feel that they have policy backing and they feel that they have administrative support, right? Teachers have to make, this is not that teachers are bad or teachers are good, but we have to create the context where teachers can be proactive and make the kinds of interventions that we know matter for students. 
	I'm just keeping going. But, please, if you've got questions for me, please raise your hand or jump up and down. This third big area is what I'm calling visibility in inclusion and there are a lot of, this means a lot of things and I'm really pleased and I'm so grateful for the library for hosting this series and also for hosting this topic in the library because libraries have historically been one of the, I mean in the great history of LGB identity rights and movement, it's been libraries and bars, right? Let's go to the library. You know, maybe sometimes go to the bar, but let's go to the library. 
	Libraries have been places, when people have access to information and support, it matters. So, things like we think it's small, but things like the ally, the safe zone, markers, having visual images, it's very, I've got colleagues who are actually counting posters in school hallways and documenting that if there's literally more visible expression of your identity in the space, you're more likely to be connected to school, to want to come to school, to do well in school and achieve. 
	We know this, this is important because we know this, this is the intersectional nature of the work. We know this to be true about African American studies and we know this to be true about you know, Black History month and La Raza week and actually today is the beginning of LGB history month, who knew that? I mean, I just read that somewhere. Like, maybe it was on my Twitter feed. Today. I didn't even know there was that, I'm embarrassed to say, but here it is today. It's the beginning. So, kick off your month. February is LGBT history month I think. 
	Several other really important things that I want to mention and here we are at a university, inclusive curriculum. There's a lot of research on this and you know, for you, to sum the work of a post doc has done for a number of studies, documenting both with very grounded, qualitative data, talking with students, talking with teachers, but also with large survey data showing that when we talk about LGBT issues in the curriculum, not just in the hallway, students feel that they're represented, feel safer and are more likely to be there in school. This takes a lot of, we could talk for a long time just about what that means because you can also imagine LGB issues are more likely to be represented in some spaces than others. So, we have some interested findings on things like physical education and sport, which is actually kind of interesting because you might, the stereotype is that physical education and sport is like a really negative environment for queer kids for example, but what our work shows is that yeah, that's true, but when physical education is perceived to be supportive, it's like the most supportive. It's like the one thing that matters the most. 
	This is a great, I mean this is an intervention. So this is my, does anybody want to do an intervention with me on physical education instruction? How do we teach the teachers that are gonna be physical education teachers to make gym and PE the most exciting and supportive environment for all of us and the queer kids for example. 
	I should say this is also really an important thing because you know, before I came to The University of Texas a year and a half ago, I was for more than a decade at The University of Arizona, state of Arizona banned ethnic studies in secondary schools, much less LGBT studies. I mean, the idea that we would forbid discussion of who we are as people is really, is concerning because we know that when kids see themselves represented in the formal text of their space, when they see the pictures of themselves and they know that they're part of history, they're more likely to, it's just so obvious, they're more likely to be there. They're more likely to want to be there. They're gonna have more connection. They're gonna succeed. They're gonna be functioning, happy adults.
	Finally, and I end on this one because I'm gonna show you another unbelievably cool teaser of a new study that I hope will come out soon. There's a lot of research that friends and I have done and other, some people here have done on high school gay straight alliances. How many of you were in a gay straight alliance in your high school? Okay, raise your hand really high so we can all see and say yay. Y'all rock. Thank you. 
	Does everybody know what a gay straight alliance is? It's just a student club basically, but it focuses on, and actually gay straight alliances are, and many places are rebranding themselves as gender sexualities alliances, but there's a lot of work now and in fact, this article here, [Salvatory Yuverno 00:24:03] and colleagues is the first study that followed students over time to demonstrate a positive influence of GSAs a year after they were in them. 
	I mean, most of the research up until now had been one time cross sectional research only. So, we've got some of the first evidence that even a year later, there's a positive effect of having been in a GSA the year before for LGBTQ students, so that's super exciting. The data I want to show you really quickly, do I still have time? I'm good. All right, I'm good. All right. This is data from the state of California, the California Healthy Kids survey is conducted every two years, these are the years starting in 2001 and until almost now. Just imagine a data point over here somewhere. We'll get that data in November.
	This is data on average percentage biased based bullying due to actual or perceived sexual orientation. Every year, let me just quickly, there are between six and 900,000 at each one of these times of administration, so this represents millions of students for the last 14 years in California. 
	What I'm showing you is the average, the school average percent of students who report that they were bullied because they are gay or lesbian or someone thought they were. So, that's what the question is. Were you bullied because you're gay or lesbian or someone thought you were? 
	When I started this work, this datum here is the seven and a half percent, it's even higher, going back I think it was earlier than that. It was in the 90s that I had those data. Seven and a half percent of students reported being bullied because they were gay or lesbian or someone thought they were in the late 90s. That is the same amount ... we thought, like how do we message that? What is seven a half percent? Does that sound like not very much? That's as many students that attend Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest school district in the world. The biggest school district in the state of California. Seven and a half percent of all kids in California are in Los Angeles Unified Schools and when that was the message that went to the media, so the other conversation we can have is how do we message these things and how do we tell the story in a way that responds to people's interest or bias or prejudice and undoes that? 
	The message for that study was as many kids as in LA Unified are being bullied every year because they're LGB and we've got to do something about it. But look what happened. Does anybody have any, want to make a hypothesis about what's going on here? Yes. Prop Eight. Can you believe this? When the Ph.D. student last fall came into the room and said, oh, it's really interesting. The trend is really strange 'cause there's this real peak in 2008 and the jaws around the room of the people that are a little bit older were like, what? Are you serious? Really? There's a Prop Eight effect. 
	Statistically, if you want to read the paper, I'll share, maybe I'll, I'll share it with you if you promise me that you know, that you're legit, is that this represents, statistically this represents a curvilinear increase, exponential increase in bullying up to 2008 and then a linear decrease following it, if when we model it mathematically, statistically, but the other really important, unbelievable is this Prop Eight? Could this be true? This curve, there was a general increase in bullying over this period of time for other forms of discriminatory bullying based on religion and based on race. They kind of look like this, but none of them have the same statistical peak that homophobic bullying has in 2008 and look at this. If this doesn't convince you that it's a Prop Eight peak, these are the schools that did not have GSAs over that 14 year period and these are the schools that did. 
	These are the real data and when you mathematically, if you look at the curve, there's no peak in the schools that had GSAs. So, the GSA, there seems to be a real GSA effect, at least over the last 15 years in California of you know, dampening the potential for homophobic bullying and I would say probably, I think, buffering what was at the time a very toxic public discourse about LGB people and lives and for LGB students. 
	Keep that in mind for the last six months and as we move forward, what will it mean, and some of my colleagues, I have a great friend in population research center, a post doc there who's interested in looking in religious bullying and seeing what does the religious bullying in California look like for the last six months? For example, or for the last actually, well for the same period of time since starting in 2000, you know we can trace back to 9/11 for example. Islamophobia for example in the United States, we could try to test that with data like these. 
	Okay, what's my point? To wrap up the formal part of this is to go back to my conclusion, which I'll say is an implication or for us to think about. There's strong evidence using multiple methods, multiple, all across the country, different cities, states, nationwide data, multiple methods, multiple approaches, multiple disciplines, asking these questions about what makes schools safe for LGBTQ young people and I think we have pretty, have very robust evidence now that we really didn't have five and 10 years ago, that sort of inclusive policies, proactive intervention and visibility inclusion in educational environment make a difference for promoting health and wellbeing of LGBTQ students. 
	Come and hang out with us as we try to disentangle these things and learn more in the next few years. It's gonna be an interesting ride. Thanks. I welcome your questions.
Female Moderator:	If you have a question, please just put your hand up and I'll bring you the microphone. 
Dr. Russell:	Or comments.
Female:	I noticed that you were mentioning California data and I was wondering about, I guess I was wondering about Texas data. 
Dr. Russell:	This is a really good question. Actually, it's something that I'm thinking a lot and writing a lot, writing not a lot, but going to write about is the politic of data and the access to data. There are, there aren't the same data systems in the state of Texas that would allow me to do this kind of work. There are some good efforts in Texas. The Youth Risk Behavior Survey in Texas. 
	Just last, it would have been 2015, added sexual, added a sexual identity question for the first time in the state of Texas, which is a big deal. So, for the first time The State Department of Health has data to be able to at least look at disparities based on sexual identity. I don't know that there's any, I've not seen any explicit reporting of those data, but it exists in Texas. But there's not a data sources that's as robust as this one that goes back as far as this one does.
	The unique thing about California is that that Healthy Kids Survey was, The California Healthy Kids Survey was created sort of as an alternative to The Youth Risk Behavior Survey, The National Center for Disease Control Prevention Survey and it was developed as an alternative because they wanted it to focus on health as well as just risk. The Youth Risk Behavior Survey is really all about you know, sex, drugs, alcohol and naughty things and in California they wanted to include positive supports and resilience questions. 
	They have an incredible archive in California. The other thing that we're doing in my lab, and I have funding from a foundation in Washington that supports this research for the next few years is linking that data with data from principals and teachers, to be able to look at what principals and teachers say is going on in schools in terms of policy and practice and whether we can trace an effect of that on kids and the short story of that, the short, Laura [Bonnover 00:32:22] is over there, is the one who's kind of leading that and the short story of that work is that GS, like the thing that really seems to emerge is GSAs. GSAs seem to be like a major, positive influence in schools. But, I'm sorry. That was a long, long, I told you I couldn't say, give a short, tell a short story.
Female Moderator:	Thank you. Other questions? 
Dr. Russell:	I'm an advocate for new data. Yeah. 
Female Moderator:	Hang on, I'm bringing you the microphone. 
Male:	Thank you for being here. In the graph that I saw, it seems like in 2014, the bullying percentages was significantly higher than in 2001. Why do you think that is? 
Dr. Russell:	You mean in the most recent year? Well you know, I've thought a lot about that. I think it just, we haven't recovered from ... I mean I think, there are a lot of things, I'd be, what do you think? I mean, one question is what do you think? I think that what's happened you know since, what's happened in the last 10 years is just a heightened public discourse about LGBTQ in lives. Now, this is California and there was already in the 90s, but this was, you know if you think about when, there were propositions before Prop Eight, but Prop Eight was the one and I think the discourse, the marriage equality discourse that came after that and a lot of, I think that for LGB, this is why I think the question about like aren't things so much better? I actually think in many ways there's much more possibility to see yourself in the future if you're a teenager, to imagine your future, but there's also much more potential for social regulation, peer regulation, victimization because I think we're talking about it more. It's in the environment more.
	There's a whole ... I have other, I could give a whole talk on what I think is going on developmentally for kids right now and I think that, I think we are in a unique time where actually things may not be better because of the larger social environment. I do think that these large, that we fool ourselves when we think that teenagers are not engaging in the big public discourse that is going on around them. I think we are absolutely wrong if we think that oh, this discourse of race and racism in this country, you know, seventh graders are just going to school every day. They are hearing it. They are not talking about it at home. They're not talking about it in their classrooms. They're talking about in the hallways and the playgrounds and wherever. They're talking about it without adults to help them have a framework for analyzing, critiquing and thinking about what's going on in the world. 
	I think that's my interpretation of why we haven't like fully recovered, blah, blah, blah. Sorry, that was a long answer. 
Female Moderator:	Question here? 
Dr. Russell:	Yeah. 
Female:	I kind of have a question. I'm assuming some of the answers that I might be seeking could be in the book that you have recently written, but I'm working here at the university, and I know this is particularly talking about secondary education, but do you have suggestions for staff or personnel that are working with students in general for how they can be a part of pushing those implementations, especially when there's pushback from parents and families, you know with them potentially saying that it's a value statement you're making rather than it being inclusive of all people? Like what are your suggestions from that perspective and then I mean, I think thankfully at least in the space I'm in, UT seems to be a more inclusive environment, especially being in Austin. I mean that's, I don't know that to be necessarily a fact, but what are your suggestions or what kind of things can we do to try and keep pushing those things from our spots. 
Dr. Russell:	Yeah. I think at a very basic every day, interpersonal, interaction level, this issue of visibility inclusion is really critical and not to assume that people will understand that that's who we are and what we mean in our lives and the way that we live. So, like, I really think if you're working with students, having a safe zone, is that what the culture is here? I think it's safe zone, right, or is ally? Safe space. Okay. Having that on your office, engaging, there are a lot of like day to day, like the visibility part really matters. 
	I think encouraging all those of us that are on staff and faculty, encouraging proactive discussion about diversity and inclusion. I'm the chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee for the College of Natural Sciences, so shout out to all the other people that, if you're in the College of Natural Sciences let's talk, if you have ideas about this, but encouraging every department to be devoting time on a faculty meeting, to be devoting time on a staff meeting, to be thinking about how can we be more explicit and more clear about being an inclusive environment for everybody and then showing and living that.
	I think for LGBTQ undergraduate students, there are a number of, there are lots of kind of informal, interpersonal things that we can do to shift our behavior. I think people, our students want to connect with us, with each other and with us and I think you know, being aware of our own heteronormative bias in our language, you know, talking with students about, do they have a partner? Do they have a boyfriend or a girlfriend? You know, making that a practice so that you ask everybody without respect to what you know about, what you believe that you know about their sexual identity or sexual behaviors. Asking everybody is it a boyfriend or girlfriend? How's that going, is a way to disrupt and make space for them to know oh, if that was ever, if I was the queer one, I would feel totally comfortable with you.
	I think that there are lots of small things that we could do and then of course, together, we can advocate for safe and inclusive environment in terms of these kind of proactive, obviously we need to be, obviously we have to proactively intervene and this is something actually that diversity, the provost is leading an effort on diversity and inclusion and I think that those, I think that that's one of the trickiest things, is like how do we at a space that values debate, disagreement, differences of values and opinions, how do we promote diversity and inclusion in a context that also absolutely promotes disagreement, and diversity of perspective and opinion.
	I think there's a lot of things, of ways that we need to you know, be involved and be engaged in these conversations. I mean, I think as a university, we do a good job in terms of if you think about our policies, we mostly do a good, you know, I think we do a good job. I'd be interested to know, we have progressive policy, the policies that we would want to see for the most part and I think the question is, do we have those at the, if we have those at the university level, do we have them in our colleges? Do we have them in our departments? I don't know if I, has that addressed some of your question? 
	I think the visibility thing, just having the fact, you know, pizza and research, or research and pizza, there's gonna be something gay going on. That's great. I'm saying that because it's me, but LGBTQ, you know, to have Islamophobia be on our agenda so that we're talking about it and we're sure that our students know that we're talking about it and we're aware. We just have to have it, we have to be, every way we can be visible, we have to be visible. Now more than ever.
Female Moderator:	I think right there, we're probably gonna have to wind it down, 'cause it's probably time for people to start heading off to the next class, but thank you very much Dr. Steven Russell.
Dr. Russell:	Thank you. 
Female Moderator:	This was really great, and if you would please, you've got the half sheet feedback form, we'd really appreciate it if you would fill that out and then you can leave it in your chair, and we'll pick those up. 
	Next Research Plus Pizza's on February the 28th, that is a Tuesday, yes, a Tuesday, 12:30 in this room. Dr. [Marybell Traun 00:40:33] from Radio TV Film will be talking about race and ethnicity in current television programming, talking about shows like Blackish, Master of None and things like that. So, be back here. There'll be pizza. 

DrRussell 

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