During the ‘funeral,’ attendees wrote messages on small colorful slips of paper, folded them into paper cranes, then left them in a coffin that said ‘RIP’ on its lid.
Even though the staff at Harvard University’s LGBTQ+ “QuOffice” have been incorporated into a new center within the Office of Culture and Community, more than 75 students attended a “funeral” on Friday to mourn the loss of the “QuOffice” building space — including some students who had never visited the office previously.
Over the summer, Harvard University closed the “QuOffice” rooms that served as an event space and provided resources to LGBTQ-identifying students. Two student groups — the Harvard University Queer Advocates and the Queer Students Association — hosted a “funeral” for “remembrance, reflection, and resilience” to honor the “QuOffice.”
“The death of the QuOffice is so much more than the loss of a physical space to be in community together,” Amber Simons, an undergraduate student and co-director of the Harvard University Queer Advocates, said in a speech during the “funeral.” Simons continued, “It represents the silencing and erasure of queer voices.”
Katie Kohn, a university employee who advises undergraduates and teaches for the Harvard Extension School creative writing program, said she would continue to use the university’s resources to support LGBTQ+ initiatives.
“Under the umbrella of Culture and Community, we are going to keep creating spaces for queer joy, for folks to be together, and we’re going to keep spending Culture and Community money on gay sh*t,” Kohn said, per the student-run publication Crimson. (The Crimson’s story was updated to say that Kohn objected to the use of her remarks in the article and that they were “included without her knowledge or consent.”)
Caroline Light, the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Women, Gender, and Sexuality, delivered a “eulogy” while wearing all black and what she called a “Southern widow hat.” Courses previously taught by Light at Harvard University include “Guns in the U.S.: A Love Story,” “The Secret Sex Life of Anthropological Objects,” and “Off the Page and Into the World: Feminist Praxis in the Community.” Her publications include “What Real Empowerment Looks Like”: White Rage and the Necropolitics of Armed Womanhood and Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense.
“Now, as we lower the rainbow flag at half-mast, we breathe a gaping hole in our campus community,” said Light. “While the QuOffice may be gone, queer students remain as loud, fabulous, and stubbornly visible as ever. May the memory of the QuOffice be a blessing and an inspiration to us, and may its ghost continue to haunt those who would mistake cowardice for neutrality.”
During the “funeral,” attendees wrote messages on small colorful slips of paper, folded them into paper cranes, then left them in a coffin that said “RIP” on its lid. An affiliate of the Harvard University Queer Advocates told the Crimson that the student group intends to turn the paper cranes into an art installation on campus.
“It is said that if you get a thousand paper cranes together, you can make a wish,” Hannah L. Niederriter, a co-director of the Harvard University Queer Advocates said, per the Crimson. “So we hope that the queer community will continue to thrive here with the wishes of all of you today.”
A student who attended the “funeral” explained to the Crimson that there are more serious matters concerning LGBTQ-identifying students than the closure of a building space.
“I’m much more scared of the fact that I’m trans, and if I lose my passport, I can’t get another one with my gender marker right,” the student said. “That is way more terrifying than not having a space with some free coffee and printing in the basement.”
During the event and in interviews with the Crimson, attendees acknowledged that the “QuOffice” had its flaws, while some freshmen had never visited the space before.
“We ran out of snacks too quickly. We got burnout trying to drive institutional change, and oftentimes we felt sad that we were confined to a basement that didn’t have much sunlight,” Niederriter said, per the Crimson.
In their advertisement for the event, the Harvard University Queer Advocates and the Queer Students Association stated that “The QuOffice was not a perfect space, but it mattered.”
Previous events hosted by Harvard University Queer Advocates include 1) “Queer Cliteracy” with “LGBTQ Sex Tips for Vulva Owners and Lovers,” 2) “I Can See Queerly Now,” which featured a sex-toy raffle and a sex educator to “unlearn gendered ways of seeing, perceiving, feeling, touching, and f**king,” and 3) “LGBTQIA+ Intimacy: Beyond the Binary.” The Harvard University Queer Advocates and Harvard College Queer Students Association previously collaborated with other groups to host a drag show in advance of the 2024 election to register voters and “raise awareness about LGBTQ+ issues.”