A Latina/o campus community’s readiness to address lesbian, gay, and bisexual concerns.

Abstract

In response to the call for new and innovative methods of assessing campus climate (Worthington, 2008), the current study is the first to examine the readiness of a Latina/o campus community to address lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) concerns. Using the Community Readiness Model, data were collected through individual interviews with a total of 16 students, staff, and faculty from programs and organizations serving the Latina/o campus community. The 6 dimensions assessed included climate, knowledge of LGB concerns, knowledge of LGB efforts, leadership, resources, and efforts. Findings suggest that there is a mismatch between the current Latina/o LGB programming and the Latina/o campus community’s stage of readiness to address LGB issues. Despite the fact that Latina/o LGB efforts had been developed for about a decade, the community was assessed to be at a vague awareness stage of readiness with regard to the dimensions of climate, knowledge of LGB concerns and efforts, and leadership. The resources dimension was found to be at the preplanning stage of readiness, whereas the efforts dimension was reported to be at the preparation stage by staff and faculty and at the initiation stage by students. Given the stage variability across dimensions, programming has to focus on the lowest stage of readiness obtained, namely vague awareness. Culturally sensitive recommendations for programming strategies that match the community’s stage of readiness are presented.

Social Justice in Counseling Psychology: Then, Now, and Looking Forward

“…The Community Readiness Model (CRM; Plested, Jumper-Thurman, & Edwards, 2016) is one such model which could guide these efforts. The CRM has been utilized to examine a variety of social issues (e.g., sexual minority concerns among Latinx campus community; Rivera-Ramos, Oswald, & Buki, 2015). In this case, we suggest utilizing the CRM to conduct an assessment of our field's readiness to fully engage social justice action, and in particular, social justice action at the level of system change.…”

The role of trust in perceptions of the sexual assault reporting climate for LGBQ college students.

“…The concept of community readiness is defined as “the degree to which a community is prepared to take action on an issue” (Plested et al, 2006, p.3) such as campus response to sexual assault. Assessing community readiness to address social problems on college campuses has been a useful tool in understanding the function of system-level aspects of the campus climate (Kelly & Stanley, 2014; Rivera-Ramos et al, 2015). There is a gap in the literature regarding how campus readiness to address sexual assault influences SARC.…”

Queer and of color: A systematic literature review on queer students of color in higher education scholarship.

“…There has recently been an increasing amount of literature focused on those who identify as Asian or Asian American (e.g., Chan, 2017; Narui, 2011a, 2011b, 2014; Strayhorn, 2014a). Similarly, Latinx individuals have also started to emerge as a demographic in queer research (Cisneros, 2015; Duran & Pérez, 2017; Eaton & Rios, 2017; Peña-Talamantes, 2013; Rios & Eaton, 2016; Rivera-Ramos, Oswald, & Buki, 2015; Rosado, 2011; Rosado & Toya, 2016; Vega, 2016). No prominent studies have empirically investigated the experiences of queer Native American/Indigenous individuals in college settings; yet, research on queer people in Indigenous communities and those who identify as two-spirit has grown in other fields (Adams & Phillips, 2006; Jacobs & Brown, 1997).…”