Name: Pam Anderson
Age: 22
Year: Senior
Major: Marketing and Communications
Hometown: Bourne, MA
Occupation: Intern at CIS abroad in Northampton
HC: What are you involved with on campus?
Pam Anderson: I’m the Vice President of the PRIDE Alliance, which is a social group for queer and LGBTQA students at UMass. We try to make a safe space and a community space to facilitate different types of events from discussions, panels, or social. We actually just had a trans discussion and had some trans-identified students come in to facilitate a discussion. I also do the Stonewall Center’s Speaker’s Bureau Panel.
HC: What do you do for the Speaker’s Bureau Panel?
PA: I started my sophomore year, and we go into classes mainly on the UMass campus and we hold panels where each panelist tells their own individual story so you can focus on what you want to focus on. After, we open it up for discussion with the class, anything from education classes or freshmen athlete classes. It’s really about creating a better understanding about the community and helping educate people on specific things and specific identities. I talk about my process of coming out and coming to understand my identity, how in the community there’s a lot of bi-erasure and misunderstanding about what bisexual and queer identity is so that’s typically the main focus for me.
HC: So you’re a marketing major, how does that play into the social activism community you’ve become a part of?
PA: It’s really interesting! The Communications department here at UMass is really theoretical and I’ve taken a lot of gender classes through the department, and the business school is, well, a business school so to couple those two can be difficult at times because they seem so adverse to one another.
HC: How do you make it work for you?
PA: For my career path, what I really want to do is take my business and marketing knowledge and bring that into spaces where it will also work with my background in social justice, so in a non-profit or mission based company. At my internship right now, I’m a marketing intern at CIS Abroad and my main project had the goal to make the company more LGBTQ inclusive and help them appeal to that market as well. In a presentation I gave to the CEO, I presented and LGBTQ resource page I created for their website that would help with search engine optimization so LGBTQ students could find the resources that aren’t typically offered in study abroad programs. It’s a marketing effort but also a community outreach effort to make their company more inclusive in this community.
HC: Wow that’s creative. On the other side of your major, what’s your role at the Stonewall Center?
PA: I work with the Stonewall Center because the PRIDE Alliance holds meetings there and we collaborate with them for a lot of the events we put on. The two groups are very different though because Stonewall is campus run, but PRIDE is student run so it’s a lot more involvement because we control everything we do. Almost all of our events are collaborative though!
HC: Where does your inspiration to do this advocacy work come from?
PA: It’s definitely personal. I went to a private, Catholic high school so in terms of my high school experience, I wasn’t around any openly out LGBTQ people so coming to college I became more aware of my identity and my sexuality. When I found these safe spaces that’s when it became more clear to me what my identity was and that’s when I started getting involved in feminism, social justice, and LGBTQ activism. These are things I would’ve liked to know when I was younger and didn’t get at that age, it was just me wanting to help people that struggle with sexuality to be able to come to terms with their sexuality as well.
HC: So what’s been one of the most rewarding experiences for you doing this work?
PA: In general, when I do the Stonewall Speaker’s Bureau Panel and there are students that come and talk to me afterwards, someone that might not’ve been comfortable to speak up in class, and they’ll ask about resources or meetings they can come to. I’ve had people come out to me and thank me for coming to class because they didn’t know resources like the Stonewall Center existed or they didn’t know about PRIDE. Just being able to see that when I’m speaking to a class that there is an impact.
HC: That definitely sounds worthwhile. So free time, do you have any? If yes, what do you do with it?
PA: I spend a lot of time focusing on feminism even in my free time, I’m working on my senior thesis right now and it’s about feminist e-zines and young women’s acts of self-fashioning. I spend a lot of time working on my thesis which is difficult but also rewarding. I also have a feminist blog but I haven’t blogged in awhile. I spend a lot of time on Tumblr, which is also related to my social justice, because honestly, before I took classes on this stuff I became aware of it mostly through the internet and specifically Tumblr. I also sing, but I haven’t spent a lot of time doing it as of late. Senior year has been almost completely dedicated to my thesis. I also used to be really into photography, I took classes and whatnot so whenever the opportunity arises to take pictures, I’m on it.
HC: So word on the block is that you’re a pretty talented singer and performer, where can we find you on stage?
PA: Singing is something I’ve done throughout my life, I focused more on it when I was younger but it’s a huge hobby of mine so whenever someone suggests an open mike night or even karaoke I’m down. I grew up performing because I did theater all through my younger years so now I like to perform slam poetry, but it’s always been other peoples’ work.
HC: Do you have any advice for undergrads that are interested in getting involved in LGBTQ activism?
PA: There are so many different ways to be an activist whether it’s feminism, LGBTQ rights, any type of activism really, you can get involved in some many different ways on different levels. Discussions, asking questions, don’t be afraid to talk about it. As far as getting started, come to the Stonewall Center and explore all the resources we have available and look for different events held on campus depending on your focus. It’s really self led and based on how much you want to get involved, so I suggest taking a class that’s specific to the topic your interested in.
HC: It sounds like you’ve gone through a big change from the beginning of college to now, who has been your biggest supporter?
PA: The community, honestly if I wasn’t in the communities I’m in, I don’t [know] if I would’ve ever reached where I am now. Freshman year I found a really supportive group of people, something I didn’t have in high school and it became a catalyst for me to find more groups that offered me this same support. Once I joined the Stonewall Speaker’s Bureau Panel sophomore year that’s when I met so many people that encouraged me to go to PRIDE Alliance meetings and they encouraged me to go to conference. This amazing community here at UMass really encouraged me to be myself and take part in things that are important to me.
HC: So with that, what are your plans for post grad?
PA: The question that everyone dreads! Being in Isenberg is kind of difficult because there is this pressure to have a job right after graduation and knowing exactly where you want to go. They help with that process, but I found that the career path I want to go on isn’t necessarily facilitated by Isenberg, so I’m having a bit of a struggle because I’m trying to combine two very different paths in my work and a lot of businesses aren’t doing the work that I want to be doing and then the mission based companies who are doing what I’m interested in aren’t interested in business majors or marketing tactics because they don’t have the budget for that. Right now, I’m just pitching myself to companies that I can come into any position and work there and that I’m doing this work for them because I think it’s important. I want to find a company I’m passionate about and mix my social justice background with my business background perfectly, which is definitely being picky for a first job. I recognize that I’m privileged enough to come out of college without debt and take my time finding a job that fits me, and I know there are students who aren’t in that position.