Junior Melodie Bonanno and sophomore Max Bernell were recently selected as the next presidents for Blue Devils United, the largest student LGBTQ+ group on campus. The Chronicle sat down with them to discuss their visions for BDU's role on campus next year. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Chronicle: What do you think are the primary challenges that BDU faces right now?
Melodie Bonanno: We are a large organization with a lot of purview. There are a lot of queer students on this campus. They exist in so many different spaces. Not all of them have the same interests. They have different levels of social comfort, they have different things that they do on campus, different things they care about in the queer community, and it’s our job as presidents and representatives of this community to be a face for all of those people at once.
Max Bernell: The issue is that there are so many different types of queer students on our campus, and it’s just so intersectional. One way we want to go forward alleviating this problem is giving educational sessions that are open to the public and targeting different groups on campus so that everyone can be well-informed and foster an educational setting.
The Chronicle: What are your biggest goals for the upcoming year?
Melodie Bonanno: Educational sessions are definitely one of them. Ensuring that first-year students and students who might have just come out or are from areas where the most up-to-date terminology is not exactly the name of the game, making sure everyone starts with the same basic knowledge level. That’s a big one. Accessibility is also really important to us. I mentioned earlier, just being able to have a conversation with anyone, that's really important to me personally.
Max Bernell: Also empowering LGBTQ+ students to succeed, because I think a lot of the institutional information at Duke isn't readily available to everyone who wants it, especially LGBTQ+ students who are shy their first year. So giving them those tools to succeed in their various communities really makes them like ambassadors for the queer communities, so we can also work with other groups to make those spaces more friendly as well.
Melodie Bonanno: The thing that I’m most excited to work on is working with other groups on campus—whether that's other groups like [Muslim Students Association], Mi Gente or other centers on campus like the [Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity], [Peer Advocacy for Sexual Health Center], or student affairs. Working with other groups on campus is the way that we get stuff done. If we exclude ourselves to working with just BDU, it will be to our members' detriment. So, pulling from the fact that we have so many allies and wonderful other queer students in those groups is really important to us.
The Chronicle: How do you think Duke compares to other campuses in terms of creating a safe space for LGBTQ+ students?
Max Bernell: Just given Duke’s location in the South, the climate is just a bit more hostile to LGBTQ+ students. In my conversations with student leaders from other universities—at least in the Northeast—they feel like they are pretty well equipped in their surroundings. Their surroundings put less pressure on them, so their university doesn't need to emphasize the kind of resources and dealing with the press that maybe Duke has to.
Melodie Bonanno: I completely agree. I’m a person who’s lived in New York and a person who’s lived in the most hick part of central Florida possible, so I’ve seen both sides of the equation and I think Duke fits quite nicely in the middle.
The Chronicle: What are your plans for advocating against House Bill 2?
Melodie Bonanno: Traditionally, BDU presidents have worked really closely with Equality NC, which is a lobbying group that works against that sort of thing in the state. Continuing that sort of work and making sure there are students present at the table—that they know there are students affected by this. I mean we’ve seen it with Duke basketball even—how our team can be affected by the existence of HB2—so this is something that is pertinent to transgender students on campus. The fact that Duke is pushing to make gender-neutral bathrooms an option on campus in light of that is wonderful and so incredible, but knowing that it’s a reactionary response to something so hateful is something that needs to be kept in mind at the end of the day.
Max Bernell: Duke should continue working with its students as closely as possible. I would encourage the administration to be in dialogue with us so that we can essentially tell them that the student body and student experience can be shaped by their behaviors and by their decisions. With HB2 and upcoming policy decisions and the way that Duke positions their stance to the students and the press, they should definitely come and talk to the students before they make any big decisions.
The Chronicle: How do you think the LGBTQ+ community fits into Greek life on campus?
Melodie Bonanno: So disclaimer, neither of us are Greek, but I do have a lot of friends who are Greek. We’ve historically had a lot of students in BDU who have been involved with Greek life and BDU has worked with Greek Ally Week every single year. While I feel like the opinion on campus is that Greek life is not necessarily for queer students, I think the narrative has been rather so much the opposite, especially recently. There has been a lot of a push to involve queer students more in Greek life, and I think creating a safe space for that by creating stuff like Greek Ally Week is a really great way to make sure that the LGBTQ+ students who want to enter that space are well represented. They know they are safe, they know there are allies in place who will care for them and they aren’t the target of bullying or harassment or hazing.
Max Bernell: Obviously, we're going to continue pushing efforts to make Greek spaces more safe for LGBTQ+ students because I don't think Duke is at the point where we can completely let go of that yet. But I do realize all the positive efforts that have been made.
The Chronicle: How do you think Duke is doing in creating a positive environment for LGBTQ+ students and how do you think it could improve?
Melodie Bonanno: There’s certainly room to grow, there’s always going to be room to grow. As a person well-versed in Duke’s queer history, we’ve come a long way, but there’s still much progress that is yet to be made. I think that was pretty evident last year with the death threat that we saw on East Campus. As much as we know that Coming Out Day is a thing that’s very well-attended by Duke students, the fact is that a Duke student was still threatened and their life was still in danger. I am personally very excited to see the new presidential administration’s leadership, to see what they want to work on there.
Max Bernell: I felt like more resources on campus targeted toward LGBTQ+ students is also something that we would like Duke to maybe challenge themselves in, for instance maybe in CAPS and mental health and different kinds of sexual care and student education courses. That’s something that we would always like to see grow.
Melodie Bonanno: At the end of the day, student groups are great, but we are at Duke to learn. This is an academic institution and the fact is that the studies of sexualities is still a minor. You cannot major in sexualities studies. I’m a gender, sexuality and feminist studies major, and there are very few classes on sexuality under that major. I’m taking my first one right now, and I’m a third-year so working with the administration to even encourage queer conversations in the academic spaces is really important to us.
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