Walking into the GLBTQ Centre at Carleton University, I spot various faces, sitting down, reading, relaxing but one face stands out in particular: that of Eddie Ndopu. His warm smile and welcoming demeanour leads me to believe that he’s proud of what he’s accomplished for the centre in the short time that he has been here and I can only agree.
How did you start off at the GLBTQ centre at Carleton?
I’ve been an activist both on and off campus for a while now. I started off my activism focusing primarily on issues on abilism and disability oppression and helping people with disabilities with opportunities, agencies, self determination and that sort of thing. I also mainstream and amplify the voices of people with disabilities and validating their lived experiences because I myself live with a disability. So I realize that disability doesn’t exist on its own, it doesn’t exist in isolation. I embody my disability with multiple identities and that includes being a person of colour and that also includes being a self-identified queer man and so I really wanted to be in an environment where I can really validate all of those embodiments and experiences and identities.
That’s why I applied be the administrative coordinator for the GLBTQ centre. I guess what I wanted to bring to the table was intersectionality and looking at the fact that there are people with disabilities and queer and trans communities and often our experiences are erased or completely ignored altogether. With that mandate I was hired and yes, I’ve been working here since then and trying to raise peoples’ consciousness around what it’s like to be queer, a person of colour and live with a disability at the same time.
There’s a lot of perpetuation of stereotypes and ignorance in our school, how would you say the centre combats that?
Well, I think we combat that by the fact there we’re so visible and our lives aren’t tragedies. When we speak about the lives of queer people or people of colour or people who live with disabilities or those who embody all three or more experiences and identities, we often frame those embodiment experiences as something tragic, right? And I think for us we realize that there’s more to our lives than just the tragedy that are experiences are crouched in. What’s tragic are the systemic barriers that prevent us from being able to validate ourselves, affirm our experiences or simply just exist in the world as human beings.
So yeah, I think we combat it through our visibility, you know we challenge stereotypes, also through providing education, support and advocacy. We are able to put together programs, initiatives and campaigns that seek to subvert some of those preconceived notions around genders, sexualities and around our bodies and so that’s very important work for us. We have a number of students that utilize our centre and the services that we provide and so we are here on campus and it’s important that people realize that and that there’s enough space for all of us to exist and self-actualize. [pagebreak]
Now you spoke about the programs previously that you had been running back to back before the winter break and that you had been very busy with those and very involved. Would you mind telling us a little about those programs, maybe give us some examples of what takes place at them?
Absolutely. So when I started, together with my co-worker Erica Butler, we really wanted to speak about subject matters there were often not addressed in queer communities. We really wanted to focus specifically on trans-embodiment and trans experiences and trans narratives and so we had a trans-informative justice week. Essentially, this was a week packed with all sorts of events to speak about transphobia, sexism, and really open up the space where trans voices could be amplified. We had a trans solidarity workshop that was geared towards cisgender students and sort of speaking about how sexism and transphobia manifests itself on a day-to-day basis and how it’s sort of built in to institutions and policies and that sort of thing. We had panel discussions as well and we had some events that were for trans students specifically so that they would feel like they have a safe space where they can engage in some of the issues that are of importance to them.
Immediately following that week, we had another packed week of awesome events that was our de-mystifying gender and sexuality mythologies week. Essentially, it was a critical awareness week. The theme was mythical creatures and speaking about the symbolism of these mythical creatures in relation to our lived experiences which was an incredible week of events. We were fortunate enough to have Darnell Moore who’s a visiting scholar at New York University, an activist, and a writer who contributes to the Huffington Post. He flew up and he gave a presentation that was beautiful. We had activists like Kim Crosby who’s done really noteworthy stuff in Toronto and across Turtle Island and sort of speaking about what it means to be fem and the workshop around sex and disability. We really had awesome intersectional perspectives and it was a great week. So I’m really, really proud of the work that we’ve been able to accomplish in a very short space of time here at the centre.
I know you’ve only been on the job for a short while but what are your aspirations for the centre in the future?
We really want to create communities of accountability and diversity of our experiences here at the centre. We are expanding our library to include literature that’s cutting edge and really have awesome resources so that people feel like there’s a good place in terms of validating lived experiences and speaking about topics we often don’t have the opportunity to speak about in classroom settings, within that academic framework. So I guess my aspirations for the centre are really that, to have it open-ended and to leaving evidence of our experiences, our lives and our bodies and I think that that’s super important.