Brief Synopsis:
David Smith (now David Hunter) was the first director of the UC Irvine Gay Students Center in 1976-1977, before the term LGBT was common. He shared, “In the early/mid-seventies there was a small independent Gay Student’s Union, with an office in a trailer in the Humanities sector of the campus. It was led by graduate students Ken Bottoms and his partner Bob Berman. They held weekly meetings at night in a study hall with around 10 regular attendees, plus others, mostly gay men. They occupied half a trailer in the trailer park where independent clubs had office. There was a small library with a few dozen LGBT books and magazines.”
In 1976 the student government invited the Gay Student Union to become an official part of the student government and provided $2000 for operational costs. David Smith (now David Hunter) was appointed as the first director of the UC Irvine Gay Students Center in 1976-1977, before the term LGBT was common. He received a $200 stipend.
David states, “It’s possible that this was the first time this happened in California or even the US. I was in contact with gay student leaders at UCLA, USC, Berkeley and some Cal States and no one had heard of this at the time. I organized the first “gay awareness week” at UC Irvine in early 1977 with various speakers, movies and our first dance party at Brandywine Commons. Other iconic guest speakers we hosted were Vito Russo, Dave Kopay, and Christopher Isherwood. We had the first article about us in the New U school newspaper.”
Joel Gallant, was the second UCI Gay Students Center director following David Hunter. The GSU became the GSA. Joel shared, “The GSU was very active on campus in the late 70’s and early 80’s. We brought in guest speakers, held film showings, had a speakers’ bureau that gave talks at schools and community organizations, published a newspaper called, Word is Out, and had joint activities with UCLA.”
Jim Meehan, was the faculty advisor and professor in Information Computer Sciences (ICS).
This rich history was lost for many years. The Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center (LGBTRC) was open for nearly 25 years before these first leaders of the Gay Student Center came forward to ask why there was no history of these early years. Sadly, this history had been lost. We are fortunate that they were able to share the amazing beginnings, including historical news articles as well as a few pages from the original Word Is Out, the biweekly newsletter published by the Gay Students Center.
This history ends and does begin again in the early 1990’s. If you have information in between we would be grateful to add it to our timeline. Please contact us. We are working to fill in the gaps.
Professional Staff Contact Information:
Davidian Bishop (director) – davidian.bishop@uci.edu
Deejay Brown (assistant director) – deejay.brown@uci.edu
Bowie Rivera (transgender care specialist) – bowie.rivera@uci.edu