The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics

Kater Shea, California State University, Sacramento

---

 

Introduction: He Didn’t Just Say What I Think He Did. Did He?

On November 30th, 2023, the new president of California State University, Sacramento, Dr. Luke Wood, decided to hold a “LGBTQ+ Student Listening Session”. During his campaign, President Wood engaged in 100 days of listening, where he created open forums for specific campus communities to express their opinions and criticisms about the university.

As a participant, who served dual roles as a queer graduate student and a staff member, I was anxious to express my concerns regarding campus culture and gender affirming bathroom access. I was hopeful about having a CSU president that wanted to make sure the queer/trans populations felt seen and heard. Before the meeting began, the president opened the session by expressing that the current size of the PRIDE Center was incredibly small. Furthermore, he stated the university was working on finding a larger space for the center because, as President Luke Wood directly articulated, the PRIDE Center was a “closet”. When I heard his statement, I initially shrugged it off as I was focused on more pressing issues surrounding the LGBTQ+ campus community. However, as time went on that word choice started to weigh on me. A closet. The irony, or at least what I perceived as irony.[1] During the Fall 2024 semester, I began searching through the university archives, originally for an assignment in my 220R: Topics in Rhetoric–graduate course–which forced students to dig through an archive through a rhetorical feminist lens. For some reason, President Luke Wood’s words pushed me to question whether the PRIDE Center really was a physical and/or metaphorical closet. After deciding on this topic, I reached out to my university’s archives and discovered that they did not produce satisfactory information regarding the PRIDE Center. This project aimed to fill in those gaps of knowledge. Within this project, I collected fliers, photographs, blueprints, leasing agreements, and among other things centered around the physical location of the PRIDE Center. To develop this archive, I contacted previous Sac State PRIDE Center coordinators or affiliates to see if they had artifacts that they were comfortable sharing for this project. Throughout the development of this archive, I displayed and organized the artifacts into a model representing feminist-queer rhetorical hope that the PRIDE Center has enacted throughout their various physical places. From this archival work about the PRIDE Center’s actions, I provide six steps demonstrating how I created this model, so that scholars, activists, allies, and LGBTQ+ diversity centers can reflect on the strategies and tactics towards creating these wished upon futures.

 

Connecting Hope to Spaces/Places

In order to understand the work that the PRIDE Center has engaged in its physical locations, it is important to define space, place, and hope; and, furthermore, to describe how these terms contribute to my theoretical scaffolding for developing this archive. In Geographic Thought, Tim Cresswell (2012) argues that places are “particular constellations of material things that occupy a particular segment of space and have sets of meanings attached to them” (p. 113). Cresswell’s research not only tackles ideas of place but emphasizes that humans create meaning associated with specific places. Creating meaning and a sense of place is referred to as “dwelling”, and Cresswell describes dwelling as “the way we exist in the world- the way we make the world meaningful, or place-like” (114). Meaning making in the world can vary between individuals; however, the concept's core emphasizes making a place feel more at home. Dwelling is how individuals put their own personal touches to these locations to become settled in. Since the PRIDE Center has moved locations and changed culture over time, the consideration of place and space[2] is crucial to understand the actions the center took to create a sense of dwelling.

Before engaging into the specifics of the PRIDE Center’s location through a rhetorical lens, understanding the distinctions between place and space through a framework is paramount. Rhetorical scholars have varying definitions of hope depending on their emphasis of study. Feminist scholar Paula Mathieu claims that to hope is “to look critically at one’s present condition, assess what is missing, and then long for and work for a not-yet reality, a future anticipated” (2005, p. 19). Hope means to make and evaluate actions that have the potential to make a multitude of needed and/or wanted futures. This theme of hope also extends towards queer and trans rhetorical work. Queer scholar Logan Smilges (2022) asserts that queer optimism is “a resistance to foreclosing the potential of the present” and an insistence that “we nonetheless creatively live lives that push inward and outward, that exceed the constraints of life as we know it” (p. 88). Similarly, trans scholar Marquis Bey (2022) examines the term “fugitive hope” and asserts that the aspirations and possible futures of minoritized communities may not happen; however, even if they do not occur, communities must perpetuate and perform the realities that need to be in existence. Hope, under a queer and trans rhetorical frame, is a nonconformist action forcing these possibilities to come to fruition. Hope also encapsulates action to examine current conditions to create change for marginalized communities and their futures.

Space can affect how individuals decide to interact and design their place, and the way people view the spaces can greatly impact individuals' attitudes of hope. Place can affect space as geographic locations and size can dictate how humans want to construct their space. Place can also affect hope since larger locations may sometimes be associated with positive feelings, and smaller locations may be viewed with negative feelings. Within the archives of the PRIDE Center, hope was generated by the organization, goals were developed to change the space, and places were physically redesigned. As demonstrated in Fig. 2, space and place can be affected by hope just as hope can be affected by place and space.

 

Seeing It Through My Eyes

As the theoretical framing informs this research, positioning myself is also integral to establish why I am invested in this work and how I am directly impacted by it. As a student at Sacramento State University for eight years, I knew how the PRIDE Center and university students were not properly supported throughout my time. I am impacted by how the university “attended” to the DEI initiatives but neglected to actually properly support students, faculty, and staff fairly (Chen, 2025). For instance, I first came to Sacramento State in 2018 as a first-time freshman with a hopeful shimmer for college as a whole; however, as I have continued to stay here as a staff member, I have grown critical over institutional bureaucracy. Due to my professional background and queer identity, I acknowledge that my positionality can be considered contradictory.

Walton, Moore, and Jones (2019) exemplify how these contradictions can occur within our positionalities. As the authors state “our identity categories create points of tension as we try to live out what it means to be supposedly contradictory things simultaneously” (p. 66). From a California State University employee standpoint, my positionality can be considered contradictory as the University implemented the new Time, Place, and Manner policy that affects workers' ability to protest on campus. As the policy states, “the University may limit when, where and how these activities take place through Content and Viewpoint Neutral time, place, and manner restrictions” (Policystat, 2024). Therefore, me being a staff member, student, and queer individual creates opposing or conflicting identities. For this rhetorical analysis of hope on the physical places of the PRIDE Center to emerge, I allow my positionality to guide the data analysis. My precarious positionality enhances my research. 

 

Methods/Methodologies

For this particular data collection and organization, I incorporated archival methods to collect data. Scholar Sally Benson (2023) informs the way I approached archival research as she claims that “Unsettling archives thus requires collective memory held in communities to confront histories of record that wound and result in void regions” (p. 141). Collective memories are informal archives which include “memories, communities, and even land” being considered within archival research. Therefore, I examined the Sacramento State University Archives location and examined materials in Fall 2024. Out of hundreds of boxes located within that archive, only two boxes were dedicated to the university Pride Center: 1 box had flyers, budget reports, and other official documentation while the other box only contained t-shirts–nothing else. For the only box with relevant material, I captured pictures of artifacts and organized them by semester. As I began capturing images of these artifacts, I realized that these materials were not enough to form an analysis. Based off of the cataloged Sacramento State University Archives, periods of time were not included within that one box.

To continue with my research, I relied on collective memories and informal archives to make substantial claims of the space. To enact this collective research, I reached out to previous PRIDE Center student workers and coordinators through email, social media, and Linkedin–with their approval–to ask for any photographs, flyers, documents, or additional artifacts from their time at the PRIDE Center. Through collective participation, I began formalizing my own archive from the materials they provided. No interviews were conducted for this research. Due to the sensitivity of this information, I am cautious to make claims about the university and the conditions of the PRIDE Center without sufficient artifacts collected. However, once I received the materials from each coordinator, I organized all of these artifacts by semester and academic year including the one box from the university. As I move forward, I will story the data to make sense of the Pride Center’s history at Sacramento State University. 

 

The History of the Places and Spaces for the PRIDE Center

To understand the university’s archival negligence with the PRIDE Center, contextualizing the center's history is integral to showcase its impact to the campus community since 2004. Throughout this next part of this article, I will unravel not only the university’s attempts at diminishing the center, but the actions that the faculty, staff, and student advocates made to progress the PRIDE Center. First, I will acknowledge the erasure that took place in the Multi-Cultural Center. Second, I will spotlight the physical limitations of the PRIDE Center’s first location and the challenges that occurred. Third, I will then transition into PRIDE Center’s time in the University Union and the problems that arose due to a lack of leadership. Fourth, I will examine how their move to the front entrance of the University Union led to harassment from too much visibility and the community care that the center engaged in for its campus community. Through this section, readers will understand from an institutional level how organizations can take actions of hope to create the futures that they envision. Finally, from the data collection that I present, I will discuss the counternarrative model that emerges from the archives. This model can allow organizations to not only categorize their generative work into tactics and strategies of hope, but also reflect upon it. The overall purpose of my analysis in this section is to capture both my observation and data collection in Fall 2024. Moreover, storying the PRIDE Center’s through the intentional ways of scaffolding these major sections is to showcase how all these actions build upon one another.

From 2004-2007 the PRIDE Center was a student run organization that was housed in the Multi-Cultural Center across from the library. During this time, the PRIDE Center was located in the Women’s Resource Center (WRC), but the Women’s Resource Center was located in the Multi-Cultural Center. These Russian nesting dolls of diversity centers led to issues of erasure. For example, the Associated Student Body Incorporated (ASI) removed funding for the LGBTQ+ organization, and the university was not providing them with their own individual community place for students. Due to their circumstances, the organization decided to take actions such as sending letters of protest demanding funding from students, faculty, and staff. Additionally, their organizers sent letters to President Gonzalez advocating for a place. While they did not win, the organization’s student founder ran for ASI president on a social justice platform. Even though some of these actions did not lead towards large victories, the work of students in the PRIDE Center forced the university to acknowledge its presence and defy the actions of erasure.

 

Campus Community and Size

The PRIDE Center’s next location, Foley Hall (2007-2009) was their first place that was officially labeled as the PRIDE Center. Previously, Foley Hall was a housing building that was approximately 34.6 ft by 16.5 feet as estimated by the blueprints provided by the Office of Facilities Management. Some of the issues that occurred during this time was the lack of campus community since it was slightly off campus and housed with random offices including some nonSac State offices. Additionally, the location was extremely small. The State Hornet newspaper claimed that faculty, staff, and students that visited the center on opening day were “squeezed” in. Given the conditions the PRIDE Center was given, actions of geographic dwelling were used the most often. As Tim Cresswell (2013) establishes dwelling as making a location feel more “place-like:” its essence is making a place feel homey. As forms of dwelling, the PRIDE Center decorated their place with rainbow pride, showcased queer history on the walls, and started to build their Rainbow Library containing books written by and about queer and transgender people.

 

The University Union: Lack of Leadership and Resources & Visibility through Harassment

After Foley Hall was demolished for the new housing, the PRIDE Center was forced to reside in the Office of Student Organization & Leadership (SO&L) (2009-2011) on the third floor of the University Union. The PRIDE Center was required to move out of Foley Hall because the building was being demolished to build new housing. The PRIDE Center was made to share a space with the Women’s Resource Center, but this time in an office space that was the size of a cubicle, as shown in Fig 5. However, during the PRIDE Center’s time in the University Union, the majority of their issues stemmed from lack of leadership and resources. At this time, one of the directors of SO&L was assigned to lead the center. The director decided to utilize the office space for what it was designed for. Which was to do clerical and graphic design work. The main action they did to create this work was to reconstruct their public appearance through logos and designs for their pamphlets and fliers. The action to design physical handouts to share to students displayed that while there was not a physical place for students to be in, the PRIDE Center was a legitimate organization that was a welcoming space on campus. 

From this point on, the PRIDE Center was moved from the third floor to the first floor of the University Union during 2012 to 2024. This place had issues of harassment through visibility, because now the PRIDE Center was located in front of the main entrance. Visitors harassed the PRIDE Center staff, student workers, and attending students. Additionally, the space was not safe for students, faculty, and staff who were not out yet since it was so visible to the public. This information regarding the harassment was briefly shared with me through descriptions of the photos sent to me from the then-current coordinator. Some of the actions that PRIDE Center took were in forms of cultivating a space that was more welcoming for the campus community, but mostly the majority of decisions were in community care and outreach. Examples of community care were demanding that the campus community’s PRIDE Center had a gender neutral bathroom inside, providing peer support groups for students, and participating in Union events that students could feel comfortable visiting, such as Phlagleblast.

 

Recognizing Strategies and Tactics

The artifacts that I archived not only depict the narrative of the PRIDE Center during all of its locational moves in its 20+ year history, but showcases how the Sacramento State community invested in the PRIDE Center made actionable hope. While earlier in this article, I describe hope as more of an action word that allows the minoritized to recognize what is missing from its present conditions, scholar Paula Mathieu deconstructs hope into two categories: tactics and strategies. Mathieu states that hopeful strategies are “calculated actions that emanate from and depend upon “proper” (as in propertied) spaces” and hopeful tactics include “tak[ing] advantage of ‘opportunities’ and depend[ing] upon them” (2005, p. 16). With these interpretations of tactics and strategies of hope, I began to categorize the PRIDE Center’s own strategies and tactics of hope (see table below). Through this recovery project, I have discovered a histographic counterstory that is not only embedded in queer, feminist, and trans rhetorical practices, but presents the historical gaps and absences that were once hidden in others’ computer files. 

From this archival work about the PRIDE Center, I noticed that the center engaged in hopeful work that primarily fell in between these two categories. That categorization led to this model emerging, so that organizations can reflect on their previous actions of hope. I provide six steps demonstrating on how to create this model, so that scholars, activists, allies, and diversity centers can reflect on if these strategies and tactics are effective in creating these wished upon futures.

1) Collect artifacts and materials centered around the organization

2) Begin formally archiving these materials

3) Acknowledge established goals or needed futures for organization and/or community 

4) Identify issues surrounding the center that limit these goals from coming into fruition, and recognize the actions being done to combat these issues

5) Categorize work into strategies and tactics

6) Reflect on if strategies and tactics were effective in generating hope

The work that I did for this project made me settle on these steps as they were the same ones I took in order for this project to come into existence. As an important reminder, I began this project to showcase how the administration referred to this organization as a closet, which ignited the need to show the history of the Pride Center. Through this archival work, readers should understand the importance of examining their organizational histories to understand how to address a potential hopeful future for the community’s needs.

 

Discussion: Collaborating to Escape the Closet

Scholars, activists, and allies, I am calling you to action. We all need to take a moment to pause, breathe, and reflect. These steps not only allow organizations to recover their own archive, but to consider whether or not their actions were effective in making these hopeful futures. The PRIDE Center is an example of how an institution can, purposely or not, utilize space to limit hope. However, we must recognize that we can accomplish strategies and tactics of hope despite our physical locations and material resources. We–the organizations and those invested in this work–must be much more tactical, practical, and calculated with our actions of hope guiding us towards our progressive goals. These archives of hope that I have storied illustrates how the PRIDE Center displays the progression and decision making of diversity centers on college campuses. The steps and the model designed of strategies and tactics from the archives of the PRIDE Centers allows LGBTQ+ centers to recognize their own practices, and decide whether or not their approaches should rely on institutions of power. This body of work ties in together various fields of study to create a concept that can be implemented by various organizations. Simply, coalitional work has been the crux to this project. As rhetoricians and scholars, to put it bluntly, we need to come together, look at our current conditions, and get shit done.

 

References

Bey, M. (2022). Hope, fugitive. Black trans feminism. Duke University Press.

Chen, J. (2025, October 7). CSU administration hands over faculty and staff information to Federal Agency. California Faculty Association. https://www.calfac.org/csu-administration-says-it-will-hand-over-faculty-and-staff-infor mation-to-federal-agency/.

Cresswell, T. (2013). Geographic thought: A critical introduction. Wiley-Blackwell.

Massey, D. B. (2005). For space. Sage Publications.

Mathieu, P. (2005). Tactics of hope: The public turn in English Composition. Boynton/Cook Publishers.

PolicyStat. (2024). Policystat. https://calstate.policystat.com/policy/17089632/latest/#autoid-8e935.

Sedgwick, E. K. (1990). Epistemology of the closet. University of California Press.

Smilges, J. L. (2022). Queer silence: On disability and rhetorical absence. University of Minnesota Press.

Walton, R., Moore, K. R., & Jones, N. N. (2019). Technical communication after the social justice turn: Building coalitions for action (1st ed.). Routledge.

 

---

[1] Scholar Eve Kosofky Sedgwick defines “Closetedness” itself is a performance initiated as such by the speech act of a silence- not a particular silence that accrues particularity by fits and starts, in relation to the discourse that surrounds and differentially constitutes it” (1990, p. 3) and “The fragile, precious representational compact by which a small, shadowy identified group both represented the hidden, perhaps dangerous truths about a culture itself, and depended on its exiguous toleration…anyone who uncovers the explosive truths within the body of a culture to a transient young audience whose own hunger for such initiations is likeliest to be, at the very most, nothing more than a phase they are going through” (pp. 56-57).

[2] Space can be viewed in various concepts depending on the theoretical lens scholars use, but according to Doreen Massey’s For Space (2005), space has three propositions: is a “product of interrelation; as constituted through interactions”, is a “sphere of the possibility of the existence of multiplicity in the sense of contemporaneous plurality”, and that “space [is] always under constructions” (p. 9).