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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview K-0848, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Ian Thomas Palmquist was a student at Enloe High School in Raleigh, North Carolina during the early 1990s. Palmquist begins the interview by recalling an event in 1994, around the time that he was coming to terms with his sexual orientation. After a group of students had hung posters throughout the school with messages of hate against gays and lesbians, Palmquist banded together with other students to hang up posters promoting awareness and tolerance. All students involved were ultimately suspended, but Palmquist describes how the event garnered media attention. With the help of the ACLU, Palmquist and his friends were later vindicated. Palmquist recalls how he was just beginning to "come out" to his friends and family during this event. For Palmquist, the process was generally positive and he was open about his sexuality during his last year in high school. In 1995, Palmquist became an undergraduate at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Palmquist describes what it was like to be a gay student at UNC during the mid-1990s, recalling how at first he did not feel like there was much of a gay community. Eventually, Palmquist joined B-GLAD (Bisexuals, Gays, Lesbians, and Allies for Diversity) and soon became a leader in that organization. Palmquist describes the role of B-GLAD on campus, its activities, and its relationship with student government. In addition, he describes the structural changes the organization was undergoing during his tenure, focusing specifically on the decision to change the name of B-GLAD to QNC (Queer Network for Change) in order to become more inclusive for transgender students. In addition, Palmquist discusses how B-GLAD promoted cooperation amongst gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people, which he saw as a positive development. Palmquist concludes the interview with a discussion of the formation of Equality NC PAC in 1990 and his work with the political action committee beginning in 1999. Palmquist eventually became the director of Equality NC PAC; however, at the time of the interview he had only worked for the organization for two years. Specifically, he discusses the action committee's work towards supporting "gay-friendly" legislators and their efforts to raise awareness and promote tolerance.
Ian Thomas Palmquist describes his work in advocating for awareness and tolerance for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender sexualities. Palmquist "came out" to his friends and family while a high school student in Raleigh, North Carolina during the early 1990s when he became involved in his first protest. In addition, Palmquist explains his work with B-GLAD and QNC at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his work with Equality NC PAC following his graduation.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
All right, here we go. Hello, this is Chris McGinnis. Today is June the twenty-seventh, 2001 and I am interviewing Mr. Ian Palmquist at Equality PAC NC in Raleigh, North Carolina. This tape is being used to form a gay and lesbian oral history archive, which is now focusing on the history of gay men in Chapel Hill over the twentieth century. This tape will be stored in the Southern Historical Collection, which is located in Wilson Library on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The number for this tape is 06.27.01-IP.1. Here we go. All right Ian, just first off, tell me a little bit about where you were born, where you grew up and how you ended up coming to Chapel Hill.
Sure, I was born in Olympia, Washington actually, but we moved to Raleigh
when I was two, so I grew up in North Carolina, here in the Triangle.
You mentioned earlier that you were involved in some gay activism early on. Even to start out earlier, when did you realize that you were gay, and that whole thing.
Sure, I really came out to myself during my junior year of high school, right after I had told someone for the first time, in a completely unrelated incident, these anti-gay posters went up all over our school. This happened literally the next day.
So where did you go to high school at again?
Enloe High School in Raleigh. So six of my friends and I did a response to the posters. We did a parody of the poster and then a few essays on why you should be nice to gay people basically.
General tolerance kind of stuff, pretty generic. I was not even really out to more than a couple of people while I was doing this, and—
Were any of these other folks gay or lesbian?
One of the six was openly gay at the time. I was closeted and the other four are straight.
Were they male or female?
There was one female and the rest were male. I had a really supportive
group of friends at that point. So we distributed this response and kind
of figured that we had
For distributing the parody—?
For distributing, yeah, the response to the posters. For that we got suspended for three days.
What were the ramifications for the people who put these posters up?
They ended up getting suspended too, after we had done our response. Before that, the administration had not done anything until after we responded.
What did these posters say?
Something like, it was a called, "A Call to Arms" and it said something like, "Attention all heterosexual students of Enloe! It has come to our attention that there are faggots and dykes in our midst. Tell these sexually immoral people that you don't want them displaying their perversion in public." Something like that.
Did it have a Christian flair at all?
Not really, it was obviously pretty bigoted, but there was not any specific religious overtone to it. I don't know the guys who did the posters, so I don't know what their background is.
So you never found out who they were?
I knew the names of them, but Enloe is a school of 2000 people and I never actually met them.
So it was almost like a small campus.
Yeah, yeah it was bigger than a lot of colleges.
What exact year was this?
That was the spring of 1994.
Wow, okay.
So, relatively early for gay high school stuff, apparently.
Yeah, especially for North Carolina.
Yeah, we did not really think that we were doing anything particularly groundbreaking or unusual, but then we got all of this attention from people because there were not out gay kids in high schools in North Carolina.
Did you speak to the media during this ordeal?
Media, people in the gay community starting contacting us and were really shocked that this even happening. That high school kids were talking about these issues.
Oh, I see, you mean that they were shocked that you were standing up for yourselves, not that the homophobic posters had been posted.
Right, right.
So that was also how you came out.
Ironically, I was not out to my parents during the whole controversy.
They just thought that you were a little liberal person—
As far as they knew I was participating as an ally. My brother was actually one of the other people suspended too and he is straight. I think that they were wondering at that point, but they did not know. I came out to them towards the end of the summer in 1994.
How did they respond to that?
They were very supportive. My mom went through the usual, "Oh, you are not going to have a happy life. You will be lonely forever," thing. But, we worked through that and she is really, really supportive and is involved with GLYSN now, so she is great. My dad is a much quieter type, but is also pretty cool.
Quietly supportive.
Yeah, quietly supportive. And after that, I was out to everyone in my high school for my senior year.
Did you openly date then?
I did, I went out with a guy over that summer between junior and senior
year and we were pretty out amongst our friends. We broke up by the end
of the summer though and the sort of went back into the closet. So, I
kind of respected that and didn't
Oh, you went as a ménage a trois.
It was not sexual.
You mean you just took your picture together.
Yeah, we were just fucking with people's minds.
So when did you arrive in Chapel Hill?
I got to Chapel Hill in the fall of 1995, I started as a freshman. At that point I really was not planning on being particularly involved in the gay community or as an activist or anything, I sort of reverted to my more quiet ways, I guess. So I was there my freshman year, that was a pretty quiet year, I did not really find my niche at Carolina that year, so mostly I just went to class, hung out with a few people that I knew, mostly from high school, and kept to myself.
So what got you involved with B-GLAD, which I know you were involved with. I want to discuss the fact that you changed the name, and you restructured things as well. I also want to get your general feel of whether or not Chapel Hill was a very gay place. Did you see a very large gay male community? Or should I say a GLBT friendly space, I know that is the new catch phrase.
I mean, it definitely seems like a pretty accepting place and I did know some gay and lesbian people. But, I did not really find a community immediately I don't think. At least not one that I related to.
So you didn't really see a lot of gay men around. There wasn't a bar around in 1995. Did you have a car?
I did not have a car for my first two years there. I was pretty well stuck up there.
Did you know any gay people around campus?
I knew a few gay people, but they were not really my closest friends or people that I spent a lot of time with, actually in my freshman year.
So you didn't really mix in with the crowd?
Yeah, I mean I kind of went to a couple of B-GLAD events that year with people, and was involved some in Coming Out Day, that sort of thing—
Probably the last year that I was involved, was 1994-ish. So you came on the scene the year after in 1995.
Yeah, I came on the scene the year of Karen and Dale.
Oh yeah, Dale [tone of obvious dislike and sarcasm].
Yeah, it definitely seemed friendly, I was not worried about being out. I was out to people that I met and out in classes and what not. I was not really particularly worried about wearing some gay-themed shirt or something like that. But, I really did not find a community to lock into.
So what was the impetus that got you involved with B-GLAD in a leadership level?
Actually, I dropped by the B-GLAD office right before class started for
my sophomore year and Ken Hewett and Heather Cope were going to be the
co-chairs that year and I had met them the year before. And so, I was
just kind of stopping by to see if there were any events coming up or
whatever, and somehow, they managed to convince me to become treasurer.
Where were you thinking about transferring?
Berkeley or Stanford. I ended up not applying to Stanford, but I did
apply to Berkeley and got in, but by the time I got in, I decided that I
liked Carolina pretty well and had kind of found my niche and had no
reason to go to some place more expensive.
So you had a year as treasurer, then your junior year, you decided to run for the co-chair position?
It was a really weird election actually, the first time that I ran, because I was treasurer, I mean co-chair my junior and senior year. When I ran at the end of my sophomore year to become co-chair, at that time, we were having a hard time finding a woman to run. Because you are supposed to have one male and one female co-chair. And there was briefly another candidate, his name was Robert (and I cannot remember his last name) who we found shortly before the election was not, in fact, a student.
Had he ever been a student?
No, he was just this guy who was hanging out and was always on campus and knew people and had said that he was a student.
How old was he?
He was a fairly normal college age.
He was just a native Chapel Hillian hanging out.
I guess so, and we actually found out right before the election that not only was he not a student, but that he was homeless and had just been arrested for like credit card theft and breaking into somebody's car and that kind of stuff.
Yeah, that might disqualify him.
So, he kind of out of the running at that point, and I had been trying to get a friend of mine who had been involved, Lorelei Costa, run for female co-chair and ended up convincing her and so we ran together.
Did you see any infighting amongst gay males trying to vie for this position? I don't know if you know the history, but in Carolina Gay Association, initially there weren't any women involved, there were very few at least, and if there were co-chairs, they were often both male. Also, a lot of them weren't students initially.
Right, I had not realized that a lot of them were not students.
From what I understand, they made a decision in the mid-80s saying, "You know, I think that we should have the students running the show," and that was when they put that clause in the by-laws.
Yeah, because I know that when I was there to get funding, you had to have student officers. We did have some non-students involved in the executive committee, like on the executive committee, but all of the officers had to be students.
Do you know if they actually have archives in the filing cabinets of who was actually in the organization in the beginning—a list? Because that is something that I would like to get a hold of.
That is something that is a little disappointing, because the records for this only went back to about 1990. I think that most likely that they are somewhere in Wilson Library, the records. Someone told me that someone cleared the office out and took the stuff over there, but I really don't know, so yeah, I think that if you go to John Curtis' office you could find out who were the officers all the way back, at least as long as it was an official club.
Who is John Curtis?
He is the assistant director of the union. All of the student groups have to register with them.
And he would have what?
He would have at least the application to be an officially recognized student group every year, which would have the officer's name.
I interviewed the founder of CGA, Dan Leonard. Have you met Dan?
I haven't, I have heard his name.
He lives in Carrboro, he started the organization in 1974. He started it in the Lutheran Student Union and he was a non-student. He had dropped out of the medical school and was the founder.
Wow.
So, there has often been this schism in CGA, CGLA, B-GLAD, QNC, where you have this push to be social and this push to be political and what do you think of that?
I think that is the great curse of queer student organizing.
Why do you think that there is that schism? Why don't you see such a clear schism in African American organizations, for instance?
Yeah, I think that a lot of it is that many African American
organizations or Latino organizations—well, those communities already
have some sort of social outlets, you know, they have restaurants,
family units for that matter. So there is already that kind of built-in
social outlets within those communities. So organized groups in those
communities are put in to organize some sort of political end or provide
some sort of service. With queer students, most places don't have that
kind of community, or at least no kind of community outside of the bars.
So, I think that there is a drive for gay student groups to have some
kind of social outlet that wasn't focused on drinking and hooking up. It
was really frustrating because I think that both the social and
political aspects are incredibly worthwhile and one of the big
challenges for me, the whole time I was there was trying to figure out
how on earth could I balance this? What really made it difficult was
that it seemed like the body of people who were willing to be involved a
little bit and kind of a little bit wanted B-GLAD to be social. The
people that were actually willing to do some work and organize something
were interested in the political stuff rather than planning a party or a
picnic or whatever. So, there was this sort of weird balance between
The inactive masses.
But none of the masses were going to run for anything.
Seems like when I came in, I don't know if I met you at the end of your term or when you were running. But it seems that the answer to all of this was to set up lots of subcommittees? Why don't you tell me a little bit about this structure, because that was one of the first big changes that I noticed on your watch.
Yeah, as treasurer, we theoretically had some committees that would work on things, but really those were never really active and pretty much the four officers worked on deciding what was going to happen and they either worked on doing it themselves or finding somebody and shaking them and begging them to work on it. What Lorelei and I wanted to do was spread the work out a little more and we thought that we could accomplish more that way and we could address both the social and political aspects a little better if we had some people whose job it was to focus on some social opportunities and others who were working on political and visibility projects. I think that really did strengthen the group a lot that year.
Did it increase your activity in terms of people who were then willing to do work?
Yeah, I think that it did. We went from essentially having the four
officers running things and having the executive board meetings or
whatever to having like 10-14 people on the executive board because we
had all of the chairs or the co-chairs of the committees were
automatically on the executive board and participated. So, we spread out
the work a lot and we did a lot more work that year and we did a lot
more that year. I
Some of the foundations were laid and you reaped the benefits?
Yeah, and we really got the chance to implement them. When Ken and Heather got together the group practically did not exist. I mean over the course of my freshman year, one of the co-chairs dropped out, the treasurer and secretary quit sometime during the course of the year. Nobody wanted to work in those positions, so Karen was doing everything during the last few months of her term.
Did you ever resurrect LAMBDA?
Yeah, we made some attempts to resurrect LAMBDA. I don't think that it ever turned into a particularly vibrant or stable publication, but we got like three issues out both my Junior and senior year. That was a struggle because I was doing so much with other aspects of the club, I was like, "Look, whoever is going to be the editor of LAMBDA is going to do it. I am not putting my energy into that, we will support it, but that cannot be something that Lorelei and I are going to be devoting all of our time to." So I think that they had some organizational problems getting it together and trying to start it up again, because it had been dead for a couple of years at least.
So what was leadership in terms of co-chairs as far back as you can remember? We have kind of mentioned them, but we have not done this any sort of structured way.
Okay, well, the year before I started was Dawn Prince and Patrick, the year before that was Trey Harris and Summer—
Season—
Season, right, I can never remember her name for some reason.
Season Taylor.
Season Taylor, right, and you were treasurer, that year.
Yeah, I was treasurer that year and then I ran for student council and
wanted to be head of B-GLAD. I wanted everything.
Right.
Do you remember before that?
I don't remember before Doug. After Dawn and Patrick was Dale Kawamura—
So did they have two male co-chairs?—Oh, that was Dawn, D-a-w-n, not D-o-n. Dale's friend Dawn. Okay.
Right, and then it was Dale Kawamura and Karen Erickson. Dale's last name is K-a-w-a-m-u-r-a and he is now a travel agent in San Francisco.
And who was the female?
Karen Erickson, and I think that she is probably still in the area, she took forever to finish school.
And then of course you took over.
Uh, actually that was Ken Hewett and Heather Cope.
C-o-p-e?
C-o-p-e and then it was me and Lorelei Costa (C-o-s-t-a) and then my senior year it was me and first semester it was Amanda Maris.
M-a-r-r-i-s?
M-a-r-i-s just one. Second semester it was Maia Kaplan. M-a-i-a.
Oh yeah, I remember her, okay, great. So that was the leadership over that stretch of time. Student Congress. When I was in it, we had a lot of problems with Student Congress, how about you?
Student Congress, I think, became a lot more fair-minded by the time that I was there. That was not to say that the budget was not an incredibly painful and frustrating process every year, but I think that it is for most student groups. We had a particularly tough time my sophomore year because the year before, since there essentially had not been a treasurer the second semester the finances had been handled rather badly and they spent out of generated funds instead of Student Congress funds.
That was under Dawn I believe—
Really?
Well, they had talked about doing it, because they said, "Well, screw Student Congress, we will just go and raise the money ourselves."
Right.
I don't know if they ended up doing that.
I doubt it. It is hard to function without Student Congress money. But Karen had mostly spent the generated funds and then all of the Student Congress funds reverted which naturally meant that student congress said, "Well, all of your funds reverted, why should we give you more money?" We had a bit of a battle to get some more money that year. That went pretty well.
What was your strategy? Did you say, "Well, these people were screw ups
and we are not?"
We basically acknowledged that it wasn't handled well, we recognize that, we have new leadership now, we have been a lot more active this year than we were the year before and, you know, we deserve our fair share of funding. You know, they went for it. You know, it was less than B-GLAD had gotten in previous years, but given what we were working with it wasn't too bad.
So why did you change the name?
So why did we change the name.
There were not many transgender people around?
There were not many transgender folks on campus, although there were a couple that we knew, although some had been active in the group before, one was incredibly active before she transitioned and we felt like we should be clear that we are supportive of the transgender community.
This was a male that wanted to become a female?
Female to male. Yeah, sorry.
I can never keep the genders straight.
Pronoun problems, yeah. So, we went through a million different possibilities of names and everything with LGBT in it started to get really clunky. We would end up with these incredibly long names. I had the—
So they did not like be classified as allies?
Yeah.
Against QNC, was it because it sounded like it like shopping network for gay people?
Well, I actually did not think about that at the time, I thought, "QNC, UNC, this is cute." But—
Did it come up for a general ballot?
It did come up for a general ballot and QNC ended up passing unanimously at that meeting, which surprised the hell out of me. I personally love the word "queer." One of the things that I miss about being out of college is being able to use that word so freely, but it is not something that is very welcoming for people that have just come out. A lot of people still find that pretty threatening. I felt like to switch to a name using queer instead of listing everything out, this was essentially admitting that we were not offering many social and support options anymore. Which I did not want to do. I was much more interested in the political stuff.
What kind of political stuff did you do with QNC?
We did a lot of different kind of projects. Most of our stuff was kind of in the visibility awareness-raising category, we did not have a big—
There were not any big causes?
There was not any big cause. We weren't working on non-discrimination or anything that big, which was disappointing. I always wanted to launch a big campaign, but there didn't seem to be a big—
Well, UNC does have one [a non-discrimination clause]. I am not sure, did it come to play under your watch?
It came in a little earlier, and UNC's non-discrimination policy [concerning gays] is a little strange because it is just a policy memo from the chancellor, it is not an official policy like, "race, gender, blah blah blah." All of those are in the official policy and then there is this little policy memo that says—
By the way—
We are going to treat sexual orientation the same way. So it is not really as firm and lasting as would be best.
What do you think the impetus is for them keeping that policy memo—I mean using that policy memo instead of making it part of the official non-discrimination statement?
At the time, I think that it was that the university administration was a lot more sympathetic than they Board of Trustees was.
Now Board of Trustees are nominated? Are you talking about the Board of Governors?
No, the Board of Governors oversees the whole UNC system and then the Board of Trustees just oversees UNC-Chapel Hill. Neither the Board of Governors nor the Board of Trustees were particularly gay friendly at that time. It seems that the Board of Trustees tends to be a little bit more conservative than the administration and certainly the campus climate. That is why it did not go through the Board of Trustees in the first place. While I was there, people did not seem to have the energy to take on that kind of campaign.
Has there ever been any kind of feeling that there may be political ramifications?
Oh, certainly.
From the legislature.
Exactly, I think that is certainly the concern among some of the Board of Trustees probably would just oppose it outright and others don't think that it is politically feasible and don't want to piss off the legislature.
Right. So are you aware of Chapel Hill's non-discrimination policy?
Yes.
I was kind of shocked that it was passed on September 16, 1975. Twenty-five years—
A long time ago.
Twenty-six years ago almost. Do you know of any other place—Do many other cities in North Carolina have a non-discrimination clause? They use the term "affectional preference" instead of sexual preference. They thought that the use of the word sexual was too risqué.
Yeah, that was very 70s, right.
Does Carrboro?
Carrboro does, yeah. Raleigh, Carrboro, Durham and Asheville has a vague one, it does not list any specific categories, but theoretically it can be used—
What does it say? Nobody is subject to discrimination!
Yeah, something like based on group membership, or belonging to a certain class of people or something like that. It is really vague and probably not very enforceable.
And all of these are, of course, only applicable to city employees.
Right, to require businesses to not discriminate, they would have to get the legislature to okay them doing that, which Durham and Orange County have tried for years and years; and it never passes.
Are those the only cities that you know of? Wilmington for instance?
Those are the only ones that I know of right now.
And what is the time frame? Do have a—Well, I guess that each of those cities could be contacting and they could tell—
Yeah, I have a listing somewhere of the exact policies and that stuff. Yeah, I could find that for you.
Great, great. So I guess, with you coming in during the mid 90s, gays had
become kind of trendy in a way. People talked about them a lot, I guess
because of the Clinton Administration in general it was part of the
national discussion—unlike, for
Yeah, some—
Whether it was just amongst people on the street or whatever, people were pretty aware that gays existed.
Yeah, I think that I was aware that gays existed—
Well, I mean everybody in town whether it was a little old lady—
Yeah—
Or a skateboarding kid on the street, or a hippie, they talked about the gays in town or whatever.
Yeah, I think so, I didn't actually know any gay people growing up until my junior year of high school.
So the first gay person you ever remember meeting was—
Yeah, yeah and I was kind of shocked. I think that is what sort of prompted me to start thinking and going through my own coming out process, it was like it was not something that seemed like a real possibility, like something that happened to real people before that point.
You obviously got kind of involved in the activist scene, there are obviously other venues where gay people interacted. Did you know about any other places where people went? I know that Chapel Hill did not really have that big of a bar scene, but.
Yeah, I mean, plenty of guys drove on down to Raleigh every weekend to go to Legends, sometimes multiple days of the weekend, and of course there is Café Trios scene which overlapped a lot with the activist community, but not completely.
That was always kind of bizarre to me, Café Trios—
Yeah.
Coffee doesn't seem to be very facilitatory to socializing. Was that just a place where people would hang out?
Yeah, Café Trios—I don't drink coffee, actually, but I was there every night for most of my sophomore and junior year. That is just the place that I would go. You never knew exactly which of my friends would be there, but there were always folks around.
Did students ever—Did you ever get any kind of pressure, did QNC ever get any kind of pressure about the T-room scene. About those homosexuals have sex in the bathrooms and what did you know about it.
We—well, I think that everybody hears the rumors and has some idea of which buildings have—
Which ones were rumored when you came?
God, when I came, actually, when I first came there was a map on the wall
in the B-GLAD office that someone had shaded in pink
Buildings were just kind of highlighted in pink?
It did not say what they are, there are just these buildings which are
highlighted in pink and you look at them and you are like, "What do
these buildings have in common?" Hmmm.
Did anyone ever approach you as the spokesman for the gay community and that they felt like there was a problem and they needed you to handle it?
No, but I have heard of this in the past.
In the past people did.
I have heard, you know, nightmares.
Yeah, Joe Herzenberg was called to the meetings.
Susan Erhinghaus. You know there was this overlap between the people who are out and involved in B-GLAD and the people who are in the T-room scene is really minimal.
Usually those folks are really closeted.
Yeah, and I don't think, there was nothing B-GLAD could do about it if we wanted to. But no, we really did not get a lot of that.
Yeah, because I got a speech when I first came to UNC and people said,
"If anybody calls and wants to talk to you, fine," because we would get
a lot of prank calls. But they would say, "Never talk to anyone about
T-rooms." And I was like, "What are T-rooms?" And this lesbian said, she
said, "Well, they are places where gay men meet and interact… "It was
very PC. So I was picturing something like the Carolina Coffee Shoppe. I
was like, God I want to find the T-rooms!
Funny.
So did you ever hang up any fliers or anything in Bingham, if you though you may be able to attract some people?
Oh yeah, we always made a point of putting LAMBDA out in those places and other stuff because we wanted to let queers, whatever they were involved in, know that they were welcome at B-GLAD events. We kind of made a point of doing that really.
Were you very aware of Jordan Lake?
Always heard about it, don't really know much about it.
Do you think that the students of UNC ever interacted much with the gays in town that were not necessarily tied directly to the university? They may have gone there at one point—and if so which folks those were.
Not—
Well, we have mentioned Joe Herzenberg—
Well, I certainly knew of Joe Herzenberg and Mike Nelson and those folks but as far as being really, I don't know there was not a whole lot of overlap between the Chapel Hill community and the UNC community.
Not much interaction.
Yeah, and I think that it is a generational thing.
Great, well we have covered a lot here. So obviously the only place that there was really available for people to interact in was Café Trios.
Yeah, Café Trios.
So tell me about Glen Grossman, he seems to be kind of the newest personality.
Hmmm, how do I do this—
The next Doug Ferguson.
It is on tape now [jokingly], you can have it sealed. "Sealed until Glen
Grossman leaves."
Terrible.
There is definitely criticism out there, but my God, you have got to be impressed at least in terms of—and I can definitely be known as one of the detractors, but I can't help but support the amazing amount of financial resources that he has been able to command.
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I think that he has done some really amazing things.
What's the story, as far as you know in terms of interacting with—well, how he got Gotham to go along with this?
I actually don't know a lot about the Gotham story, because that was really just starting up as I left, I think. So I don't know exactly how he managed to pull that off. I was definitely around when he got CAMP started.
How did you feel about CAMP? CAMP was for graduate students at UNC. That could have be a competitor for you.
Yeah.
I guess that could have happened after you had left.
Well, that was frustrating. I think that Glen arrived probably around my senior year. That was his first year at UNC. God, he has made an impact really fast. Yeah, he showed up in the office and wanted to know what was available for grad students and you know we had quite a few grad students involved at that time and we were like, "Well, you know, there are no grad student specific thing, but we have been involved." We offered to help through B-GLAD do whatever grad student specific work, sounded reasonable. He chose to create a separate organization, which is fine. I think that it serves an important need for grad students.
Did that hurt QNC?
I don't think that it significantly hurt us. It was frustrating because suddenly people thought of QNC as the undergraduate organization rather than just a broad, open to anyone sort of organization. We had had a lot of really involved grad students in the past and actually we still did after CAMP started, but I think we had to really stress that, "No, it is really okay, we are not just undergrads. You are welcome to participate." I think that at that point, QNC was offering some different things than CAMP was. CAMP was primarily social. Glen and, you know, who ever the co-chair was—
Jesse and Mark was involved with it for a while.
Yeah, they would use CAMP as sort of a platform for doing some political things with the administration and what not. That was great. But, for opportunities to actually get involved and working on things, I think folks came to QNC more.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
Okay, this is the second side of the tape of the interview with Ian Palmquist. The number for this tape is 06.27.01-IP.2. Okay, we were talking about the GLBT—
Resource center. Yeah, I think that that was Glen's brainchild. I think coming from the Northeast and from Tufts he was shocked at what we didn't have. I kind of came to Carolina with a "Wow, we are so much better off than most Southern schools" approach and Glen came with the, "Wow, this isn't as good as what we have in New England" approach.
I think that this is worth a little transition—or moving into another area. Do you see a big difference between gays who come a Southeastern cultural perspective and those who come from a Northeastern?
Possibly. That is a difficult question. I mean, I don't think you can make any real clear generalizations, but I think a lot of people from the Northeast are very used to—
Political correctness can be so difficult.
I know. They are very used to what they have, and a lot of ways, they do have a lot of resources that are more available to them.
Do you think that Northeasterners because of the greater amount of education, quite frankly, if you look at the poverty that the South is still struggling with—granted there are obviously working-class areas within the northeast, but maybe the climate is even a little more accepting to gays. So, there are a lot of Southern gays who are coming from a more challenged background in terms of not only money or class but also ignorance. The religious right is based in the South.
Yeah, well, I really think that that is a factor, I mean, a lot of New England has this libertarian streak to it, which I think is very favorable to gay folks and that is not something that we have as clearly in the South. Yeah, a lot of New England I think is a few years ahead of us in a lot of ways. One interesting switch that I noticed during my time in B-GLAD just during my four years here at Carolina, my freshman year I went to the first meeting. A friend of mine dragged me there. Everyone was shocked that I was already out. Then, by my senior year, the freshmen that came in that year most of the people that came to the meeting anyway were already out. That was a huge shift. I think that that probably happened already a lot earlier in the North. So, you know, at Carolina, B-GLAD really did still need to have some sort of support aspect because, you know, there were a lot people, especially freshmen, that were just kind of coming out for the first time. I think in some more accepting cultures up North that that may have been less of a challenge which gives you more time to accomplish some of these political things and getting administrative support and all of that and, you know, the political climate, most New England states are going to have the kind of legislature to deal with that we have here.
So we were talking about getting this resource center.
Resource center [introspectively].
So Glen got some folks together, you were obviously on that board, I don't know if it is still around.
Right, well—
That is what inspired me to do this project.
Really, that's good. It's been interesting seeing how that evolved because at the time that I joined the advisory board, the idea was to do a needs assessment to use that as the first step to getting some sort of institutionalized support for LGBT people on campus. Then, I think that Glen talked to the chancellor and the chancellor expressed some support for the idea of having a resource center and the whole needs assessment—
Was that Measner?
Yeah, Moeser, or something like that.
It is hard to announce, it is like Mosnier or something like that.
Yeah, and once Glen had the since that the chancellor was supportive I think people just did not really see the need for doing the needs assessment anymore. Which I thought was pretty unfortunate, because I—
The members of the board felt that, or members of the—
Members of the community, yeah, and the impetus for the members of the board to continue moving forward on stuff just kind of disappeared.
Who were the members of the community? Who were dissenters of that?
Mostly current students, I think.
How would they have anything to say in that? I mean, you just felt that the consensus amongst the GLBT community was that, "Well, we really don't need to do this?"
Yeah, I think that people felt like their energy would be better spent
sort of lobbying to get the resource center than to do this intermediate
step of doing a needs assessment. Which, I really thought was
unfortunate. I am not convinced that a resource
What do you think would be a top priority?
I think that there are some other types of institutional support, you know, I think, some clearer policies. Making the diversity—not diversity policy—the non-discrimination policy a little more clear. I think that working with professors to make the classrooms safe and comfortable place to be gay is worthwhile. Having a center and a staff person dedicated full time is a great goal down the road, but I don't think that it is attainable now and I am not sure that it is the best thing to do immediately?
Why is it not attainable?
Politics. Primarily, with the Board of Trustees to some extent, and then the legislature. If you look at the budget this year, the university is going to take a hit because of the budget crisis anyway.
A lot of buildings, but nobody to staff them.
Right, exactly,
So this is basically lost and put on the back burner, in terms of looking for a GLBT resource center.
I have been less involved in it lately, so I really don't know exactly
where things are at this point. I do know that some folks are still
trying to push on that. I don't know exactly what steps they have been
taking as someone out in the community and because of my job, I get
asked to be involved everything that comes up. I just decided
So you ended up graduating and then, you—Was it initially PRIDE PAC when you go involved with it?
It was already Equality. I had volunteered while it was still PRIDE PAC. My senior year PRIDE PAC, which became Equality during that year, was working on a project called "Equality Begins at Home" which was a week of political activity in all 50 state capitals and in North Carolina, they took it the extra step of doing it in cities all across the state. People were doing different kinds of programs and events that week. As a co-chair of B-GLAD and later QNC, I was involved with that effort in sort of a triangle planning committee. That is how I got involved and how I got to know MK Cohen.
What was his name again?
MK is she.
Is she still involved?
She has moved on, she is now—
She's dead?
No, she is the director of public policy for GLYSN nationally.
Well, before we get to far into the organization, which I want to address it, what are your feelings about people who are activists in terms of QNC. Do you think that people who are active in organization like QNC, do you think that it is more of a liability or a benefit? A liability in terms of—both of us working in those organizations can appreciate the amount of time that it takes out of your schedule when you are supposed to be in school.
Yeah, for me, it was incredibly valuable. It was stressful and exhausting and a lot of weeks it was really frustrating, but I thought that it was absolutely worthwhile. I learned so much in terms of really usable skills in life by leading QNC and learned so much about leadership and working with people and politics and all of it. I would not trade it for anything.
But do you think that it impacted your GPA?
Oh sure.
Do you think that if you had not been involved—
I am sure that I would have done somewhat better in certain classes
So then, it did not seem to be that big of a liability to you.
No—
And, ultimately these extracurricularrs could help someone…perhaps get into law school.
Yeah.
No, it was definitely, I think not everyone felt that it was so great.
So, you had peers who were involved in this who said, "Oh my God, we have got to get this thing out and I have three exams."
Yeah, well, my co-chair Amanda, who was co-chair my first semester of my senior year, who is absolutely amazing and still a really good friend of mine, she was trying to do QNC, pursue a music career, and be a student and that was just too much to do. This was really stressful and I am sure it hurt her in terms of grades and stuff sometimes. I think that if you talked to Ken and Heather, I think that they would tell you the same thing as well.
Another thing that I would like to address that I think is kind of
interesting to me. Initially, you talked about activism, gay
activism—whether you are talking about the Mattachine Society or CGA or
whatever. In the beginning there were gay men, there might have been a
few lesbians. They tended to be in separate organizations. Now there is
this trend, probably, I think that it is fair to say—I think that it may
have been happening in the mid 80s in the bigger cities, but probably in
the 90s we went to gay and lesbian associations; gay, lesbian and
bisexual; now it is gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender. Do you think
that addressing these issues of multiculturalism can kind of distract
gay men from forming their own community because they are so busy in
trying to