USC Gould student group raises money for an endowed scholarship benefiting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students and those working toward legal equality for LGBT individuals.
-by Jared Servantez
USC Gould students, alumni and supporters gathered at the Los Angeles Athletic Club for a fundraising event to support the USC Gould School of Law student group OUTLaw’s endowed scholarship. OUTLaw made history in 2012 by becoming the first on-campus group to launch an effort to endow a scholarship to the school.
Designed to benefit lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students and those working toward legal equality for LGBT individuals, the scholarship was envisioned by OUTLaw board members to help future generations of law students at USC. Since it launched in 2012, OUTLaw has raised $129,311, which not only surpassed its $100,000 goal, but funded two scholarships. More than 70 USC Gould students, faculty and staff, as well as several members of the Los Angeles legal community, attended the Fourth Annual USC OUTLaw Endowment reception.
Rick Zbur, executive director of Equality California, spoke about the evolving issues facing the LGBT community in his keynote address at the fundraiser.
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| Rick Zbur, executive director of Equality California, spoke about the evolving issues facing the LGBT community in his keynote address at the fundraiser. |
“We’re really seeing an incredible amount of progress in the LGBT civil rights movement,” said Zbur, the first openly gay attorney and senior partner at Latham & Watkins. “But that brings the question, especially for those of us here in California, what is it we should be doing as folks who want to improve the lives of LGBT people in our communities?”
Although marriage equality and civil rights protections have been put in place, Zbur said, there is still much to accomplish for true equality and acceptance of the LGBT community.
“If you think that our job is over because we’ve got marriage equality and civil rights protections, you’re ignoring the fact that LGBT people are more than twice as likely to be living in poverty as the general population,” Zbur said. “Forty percent of the homeless kids in Los Angeles and San Francisco are LGBT.”
Zbur grew up in a small, mostly Latino farm town in New Mexico, where he said he never would have dreamed of coming out as gay for fear of harassment and violence, and he said that is still the reality for many LGBT youth, even in California.
“We’re focused on not just LGBT equality, but LGBT acceptance,” Zbur said. “Knowing that having laws on the books isn’t enough, we actually have to think about why kids are leaving their homes in the Central Valley, or Idaho, or Nevada, or wherever they’re coming from.”
Zbur said education is critical for LGBT acceptance, and highlighted a partnership with California Faith for Equality to send hundreds of faith leaders into communities to educate about LGBT equality.
He also outlined how Equality California is aiming to connect the LGBT civil rights movement to the broader civil rights movement, in part with a program to provide healthcare providers in California’s Central Valley with cultural competency training focused on assisting the intersection of the LGBT and undocumented immigrant community.
“They’re different issues, but they’re related,” Zbur said.
With so much work done already, Zbur stressed the need for continued education and activity toward true equality.
“Marriage equality was an easy rallying point, but now that we will have marriage equality in the next few months, we need to make sure that what that symbolized – which is really full-lived equality for our community – is realized,” he said.
Seth Levy ’01, who helped launch the OUTLaw scholarship in 2012 and has remained a prominent supporter of its endowment, said the legal issues facing the LGBT community are rapidly changing. Just 14 years ago, he said, the community was fighting for more benefits for domestic partners with California Assembly Bill 25, and now marriage equality is imminent across the United States.
“What that highlights for me, as far as the law school is concerned, is the profound need for continued legal scholarship and advocacy and training up the next generation of people to really embrace very different kinds of issues than those that some of us are dealing with even today,” he said.
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