'Invisible minority' elects leader

After an uncontested election last night, the Lambda Alliance - the one-year-old umbrella coalition for all undergraduate sexual- and gender-minority-groups - chose a new chairman: College junior Kevin Rurak.

Rurak - who has been active in the LGBT community since his sophomore year at Penn- sat down for an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian last night.

In the interview, Rurak discussed his plans to lead Lambda Alliance as it strives to establish legitimacy among its constituent groups and to advocate on the behalf of what he calls an "invisible minority."

Daily Pennsylvanian: What are your goals for the next year?

Kevin Rurak: I want to improve communication between the board and Lambda's constituent groups. I also want to fundraise for Lambda so that it can dispense funds to its constituent groups and work with other minority coalitions to advocate for change.

DP: Are there any specific initiatives that you would like to work on in the upcoming year?

KR: We are working on diversity training - which is being sponsored by Penn Athletes and Allies Tackling Homophobia and Heterosexism - to be implemented for the athletic-department staff and across the University, . which includes teaching them about LGBT issues.

We are also advocating for a program in Gender and Sexuality Studies, which is something we have been working on for a while, and we are working on the blood-drive issue as well.

DP: Do you have any particular goals for the blood-drive initiative?

KR: Awareness. We want to let the University know that the policy the Red Cross has [that bans homosexuals from donating blood] is an issue for our community. It is an issue we face all of the time.

DP: Are there any challenges Lambda Alliance will face in the upcoming year?

KR: The challenge of being an invisible minority. The LGBT community has members of every other community, everywhere. Sometimes, we are overlooked because we are not always readily identified.

DP: Since Lambda Alliance is an umbrella organization, do you ever face problems with efficiency?

KR: Part of the [challenge we face] is that we are not SAC-funded because we are an umbrella group. So we rely on the LGBT Center for any money that we get. We don't need a lot of money [because] the LGBT Center does not get a large budget, so the small amount we get is sometimes tough to work with.

Establishing legitimacy among our constituents is also hard because we are so new.

DP: There was talk about talking to the admissions office on behalf of the LGBT community .

KR: We are advocating for the recruitment and retention of LGBT staff as well as the [admittance] of more LGBT students.

We have been talking about ways to have students identify themselves as LGBT in the admissions process. There is no box to check for sexuality.

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