Name: Siggi Bengston
Pronouns: (She/Her/Hers)
Major: Education
Year: Freshman
Hometown: Palo Alto, CA
How do you feel making the transition to college has been for you as a lesbian, and have your experiences been different than back home?
The main experience has been feeling like a part of a larger group. Back home I felt like the only lesbian in the world, even though I lived just south of San Francisco, like the gayest place on earth. Once I moved up here, I felt like I knew more queer people, and people were way more open with their sexuality, and it was less of a big deal. People here kind of have the mentality of “this is my sexuality, and I might not know for sure yet, I’m still on the journey, but that’s okay”. The community here is still fairly small, I kind of feel like I know everyone, which isn’t accurate but sometimes it feels like that.
You mentioned knowing and meeting people, how are ways you’ve been doing that, way’s you’ve been getting involved?
I climb a lot, spend a lot of time in the outdoor program, I’ve met a lot of cool people that way, hanging out fixing bikes, or just sitting there. Climbing is probably my main activity, I’ve been getting into trad climbing lately, which is where you use small mechanisms to keep you from falling, as opposed to lead climbing where you’re clipping onto bolts put into the rocks. It really lets you climb way more rocks, and I really like rocks so.
Where are the places you climb around here?
I really prefer outdoor climbing on real rocks. I try to get out to Smith [Smith Rock, a climbing spot in eastern Oregon] as much as I can, it’s so beautiful out there. There are the columns near Eugene which is really nice when it’s not raining, but that’s not too often in the Eug. I went to Utah over spring break to climb which was amazing.
So what would be some advice you’d give to people coming into college, specifically queer individuals?
Protect your heart. I think that is something I should have done. It’s really easy to get caught up in the hookup culture and allow your heart to get hurt. Yes, you do just have a big pool of people to hook up with, but you need to protect yourself because people will want to experiment. They won’t want more than to hook up, which is totally valid, but you have to protect your heart from being hurt by that. So I guess also to know what you want. For me, I knew the hookup culture wouldn’t work for me, but I got too caught up in it and it made me first two terms harder. So yeah, know what you want, and protect your heart, that’s the advice I have to give.