Following a year of regrouping and adjusting to a post-COVID world, EngiQueers co-presidents Zoe Irwin and Anna Wasylyk are mapping a return for Queen’s Engineering’s LGBTQ+ club.
The club, part of a national network of EngiQueers chapters, has a long history at Queen’s but found itself on shaky ground after COVID. “My first year at Queen’s Engineering was 2020, so all on Zoom,” Wasylyk says. “EngiQueers engagement was tricky. The club leadership did their best, but it was a hard year.”
“I started in 2021,” Irwin says. “There weren’t a lot of engineers in the club, and it didn’t feel like people were super aware of it. But halfway through this past year, I heard from friends that there was a revival underway.”
That spirit of renewal led both Wasylyk and Irwin to their current roles as co-presidents. “We care a lot about the queer community of Queen’s,” Irwin says. “We care about cultivating safe space and visibility and making this a more inclusive, wonderful place overall. So when I heard about this position I thought ‘yeah, that's something I want to do.’”
The two are inspired by the EngiQueers Canada pillars of professional development, education and advocacy, and social connection: one will be an area of focus as they rebuild grassroots strength.
“When we were talking about what we want to achieve, we talked about these three pillars of EngiQueers,” Wasylyk says. “The community pillar took the biggest hit from COVID. Our goal is to focus on building that pillar back up. Obviously, we will be trying to keep a balance across all three, but we think that community needs the most.”
“We’re still in the brainstorming phase,” Irwin says, “The general concept is having events that people will be interested in attending. It could be movie nights, plant potting, anything that can be a queer-focused event that can help get a circle of queer engineering students together.”
Another goal is to help members network and make connections beyond the school. “There was an inaugural queer-focused professional development conference last year,” Irwin says, “and a goal we have is to rebuild the club and get the numbers to go to a conference like that.”
Advocacy and visibility are also on the co-presidents’ radar. “Just keeping an eye out for the queer community and using our platform to bring issues to peoples’ attention,” Irwin says. “We want to make this as comfortable and pleasant a space for queer people as possible.”
“Being visible during the beginning of the school year is an opportunity,” Wasylyk agrees. “If anyone offers us tables at club fairs, we’ll jump at that opportunity. We need to get a regular crowd.”
“We’re going to use the fall to build this up,” Irwin says. “With every queer friend I have, I’m going to create a group chat, like ‘guys, it’s happening, you have to come, invite everyone you know.’ Once we get a routine group of people coming, then the word gets out.”
As a club for engineering students, both Wasylyk and Irwin feel they have a distinctive role in a tapestry of online clubs and groups. “We can focus small when it makes sense,” she says. “There are a lot of big issues out there, laws, things happening on a grand scale, which can feel overwhelming when you’re just a student in school. But we can look at the things in front of us: this program we’re all in together. We can make a significant change in our day-to-day lives advocating for issues in engineering.”
Irwin and Wasylyk also want to make EngiQueers robust enough to weather future storms. “One of our goals is to make sure the club can last though another COVID-type event,” Wasylyk says. “Engineering has a history of upper-year students passing on information to frosh and younger students. That was disrupted by COVID, and it’s very important, especially in a community like ours, to have people who can be mentors and guides, who can pass on things they’ve learned from their time at the school. Rebuilding is about making sure we restore those links between the years.”
“It can be intimidating to have a blank slate, but it’s also nice, and good to be working on this with Anna,” Irwin says. “We have similar goals and strong support from the Engineering Society. Whoever comes to EngiQueers this year, we’re not going to let them down.”
This article is relevant to the following Strategic Actions as defined in the Strategic Plan:
