The Pride Center at San Diego State University aspires to provide and promote a space where 2SLGBTQIA+ and ally community members can explore, expand, evolve, and embrace their understanding of sexual orientation, romantic orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. By engaging the campus and community in critical learning and action, The Pride Center subverts dominant, normative definitions; welcoming fluidity through redefining and reframing identities with oneself and others.

• Academic and Professional Growth
• Community Advocacy and Education
• Identity Exploration
• Intersectional Community Building
• Social Justice
• Student Empowerment
• Student Leadership Development

The history of The Pride Center starts in March 1970 when students from SDSU started the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), one of the first organizations to be founded after the Stonewall Riots.

The GLF transitioned to become the Gay and Lesbian Student Union and then in 1977 became the LGBT Student Union (LGBTSU). LGBTSU was a social and activist-centered student organization with the main goal of bringing together LGBT students. Housed in a small office in Aztec Center, student activists worked to make a welcoming and safe space for LGBT students. From having a library of 500 books and posters on the walls and windows, the LGBTSU became a valuable space for many LGBT students.

From 1998 to 2012, student, faculty, and staff advocates created three proposals to create a campus pride center. On January 22, 2014, The Pride Center officially opened its doors and began supporting 2SLGBTQIA+, queer, and trans community members at SDSU. 

To learn more about the work The Pride Center is currently doing, visit @sdsupridecenter on Instagram.

Pride Center Timeline

The Pride Center:

• Facilitates campuswide education, awareness, dialogue, exploration, advocacy, and understanding on issues related to sexual orientation, romantic orientation, gender identity, and/or gender expression
• Provides resources and support services to assist students in their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, gender identity, and gender expression development
• Fosters the development of student leadership skills and enhances student empowerment, personal and professional growth, and community service
• Addresses the unique needs and challenges of students who may experience discrimination, disenfranchisement, harassment, intimidation, and/or other barriers to student success as a result of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, gender identity, and/or gender expression

Download The Pride Center Community Norms as a PDF.

• Address anti-Blackness and racism both within and external to the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. Actively challenge systemic and institutional standards that uphold and encourage white supremacy, capitalism, colonization, and imperialism.
  • Do not appropriate Black and/or other BIPOC cultures in verbal and nonverbal communication, clothing, etc.
  • Consider the ways anti-Blackness is projected into the standard definitions of “professionalism.”
• Create a physically and emotionally accessible space. Make intentional decisions considering varying intersecting social identities, student populations, and body sizes. Allow for the complexity of identities and the fact that identities are not a monolith.
• Practice inclusion and compassion through a critical lens; and avoid intellectual elitism and disposability politics. Recognize that everyone is at different points of their learning journey. Practice patience with folks who have more (un)learning to do and openness to folks who challenge you and your (un)learning.
• Use gender-inclusive language, including pronouns (e.g. they/them/theirs), unless someone shares their gender identity and/or pronouns with you. Never assume someone’s pronouns and honor if/when someone’s pronouns change.
• Honor that no one needs to prove admittance into The Pride Center and/or being “queer enough.”
• Challenge yourself to explore multiple perspectives and viewpoints. All the issues we address are complex and multi-layered; make room for nuance. Be willing to feel uncomfortable, learn, grow, and evolve in your knowledge, values, sense of self, and understanding.
• Do not exploit others for their knowledge or expect others to share their unique experience(s). Practice humility by approaching the space with mindful curiosity. Accept responsibility when you cause harm and be accountable by actively seeking repair.
• Ask for consent around, but not limited to, conversation topics, taking photos and/or videos, physical touch, and outing someone. Obtain clear consent before proceeding and honor if/when consent is changed. Provide content warnings when engaging with heavier topics.
• Hone into your emotions, feelings, responses, and triggers to establish and set boundaries with others. Honor boundaries other people set.
• Support one another through listening, validating, and recognizing individual humanity and collective experience. Understand when to sympathize (feeling for) and when to empathize (feeling with).
• Recognize and help maintain The Pride Center as a shared community space in which everyone keeps clean and organized. Be gentle and careful with Pride Center furniture, utilities, office supplies, materials, etc.
• Support and uplift all SDSU Cultural Centers (Asian Pacific Islander Desi American Center, Black Resource Center, Center for Intercultural Relations, Center for Transformative Justice, Latinx Resource Center, Native Resource Center, Women’s Resource Center, and Undocumented Resource Center).

The Pride Center aspires toward these norms as a community. Norms are subject to change.