LGBT students find home on the Rainbow Floor

Joseph Chen | Daily Trojan

Sophomore Nicole Toto curls one foot under herself as she sits in the chair in her living room in Century Apartments. She tugs at the hem of her favorite shirt — a black tee with cut-off sleeves and white print reading “Queer Army” blazoned across the top. Below are three other lines of text, centered under the white logo of a soldier holding a gun.

Down with heteros.

Down with this world.

We recruit.

“I don’t really like the ‘down with heteros’ part,” Toto says, rubbing a thumb across the phrase. “Obviously being straight doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. But I like that it really shows what I’m about.”

In this room, in this shirt, Toto is comfortable.

Outside, that’s not always the case. As a bisexual young woman who doesn’t attempt to hide her identity or her opinions about LGBT issues, Toto is an active member of a marginalized community that makes up less than 5 percent of the American population. And on a campus like USC, that isn’t a recipe for feeling comfortable.

Toto describes two separate worlds at USC. One is predominantly straight and white, involved in sports and the Greek community — the “rah-rah-fight-on” type of USC students that Toto said are the most widely known as the stereotype for a Trojan.

Then there’s her world. It’s made up of everyone else — people of color, the LGBT community, the ones who might not fit the stereotypical Trojan mold. Even in that world, the LGBT community is a small percentage, and even in that world Toto’s identity isn’t always accepted. Outside, on a campus where these two worlds are forced to collide, Toto and other LGBT students often feel pushed to the side.

Which is why she lives here. Welcome to the Rainbow Floor, a half-wing of the second floor of Century Apartments that doubles as a sanctuary for 26 LGBT students each year.

The phrase “safe space” is one that is often tossed around in the multitude of discussions regarding race, gender, sexuality and marginalization, and it’s one that often causes controversy. But what it means to the members of the USC LGBT community runs much deeper than simply avoiding getting their feelings hurt.

“Everywhere else that I go in the world, people assume that I am something I’m not,” said sophomore Funkster Scerbak, one of the two RAs on the floor. “The basics of my identity — my name, my gender — are constantly under question. It’s exhausting.”

That is why Scerbak loves the Rainbow Floor. Scerbak identifies as agender, and for many people, that concept is foreign enough to warrant a barrage of questions. It’s not that they mind informing people or spreading the word. But having to explain that they don’t conform to “male” or “female” on a daily basis is a burden that is simply too much for a college student just trying to live.

It’s the same way for Toto. It’s not that USC is a particularly hostile environment, she says. She loves this school, loves her friends and professors in the music department. As a female-presenting, straight-passing woman, she honestly feels that she doesn’t stick out that much. And even if she did stand out from the norm, Toto doesn’t believe that USC would ever qualify as an “unsafe” space.

But that doesn’t mean it’s accepting.

For Scerbak and Toto, the main issue is ignorance. It’s a culmination of awkward stares, uncomfortable comments, a lack of understanding of which pronouns to use. For those who don’t understand, who don’t deal with issues of identity every day, these seem like innocent mistakes. But for people like Scerbak and Toto, every incident is a reminder that sometimes, others see them as “different” at best.

Back at the Rainbow Floor, that isn’t a question. Everyone knows each other’s pronouns and identities. They give advice about first dates, make fun of embarrassing Saturday night adventures and feel free to knock on each other’s doors at any time to request a movie night.

Sound like a typical residence hall environment? It is. But what Scerbak points out is that for those who are marginalized, that “typical environment” doesn’t really exist. For LGBT students, the feeling of “otherness” often keeps them from experiencing a full level of comfort where being not only accepted but also understood is a non-issue.

“When you feel that a whole part of you isn’t understood, that you have to correct people on your name or your gender or your pronouns, it’s this alienating feeling,” Scerbak said. “You feel like you’re not accepted, and honestly that feeling is too much. Here, everyone knows that people get them and so they can move on from it. They can stop being their label and start being people.”

For Scerbak and Toto, there’s just one problem with the Rainbow Floor — there’s just not enough space.

The Rainbow Floor is based on applications, and every year students are turned away. And those are only the upperclassmen — for freshmen, gender-neutral and LGBT-friendly options are practically nonexistent.

All new students, when applying for housing, are asked to mark their gender as male or female in order to be placed in an appropriate room. For students who don’t check either box, this is the first of many experiences of being forced into a gender that simply isn’t right. And there isn’t a way out, because freshman students are not offered gender-neutral housing.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the transgender population makes up only 0.3 percent of the overall national population. But if that statistic is applied to USC, this would mean that somewhere around 130 of the 43,000 undergraduate and graduate students on campus could identify as transgender.

It’s not much as a percentage. But for those 130 students, finding a community where their gender identity is accepted is the most basic and vital necessity. And while the Rainbow Floor can certainly accommodate these students to a certain extent, there’s not enough room for everyone who might need it.

In the long run, these are issues that Scerbak hopes to see addressed at an administrative level regarding housing. But in the short term, their main concern is more simple — figuring out how to make the end of the semester as supportive as possible for the residents of the floor. Because for both Scerbak and Toto, this community has created something more than just a place to feel safe. It has created a community, a family.

“We all connect because of our backgrounds, but we really do become great friends,” Toto said. “That’s where the comfort and the community comes from. We’re all friends, and we’re great friends because we understand each other and respect each other at such a basic level. It’s a great community to be in.”