Even though René Guo grew up halfway across the globe in a family where no other member had access to a high school education, they couldn’t feel more at home in Gambier.
“I came from rural parts of China, so I have a lot of deep emotional connections to a place like this,” they said. “It's just like where I grew up.”
Guo joined the campus community this summer as the new assistant director of diversity, equity and inclusion, overseeing Unity House and leading various initiatives aimed at serving individuals of all sex and gender identities.
“We have a vibrant LGBTQ community here,” they said. “At Kenyon, we have a student-centered approach, which means we really want to help students explore their own agency in expressing their needs and supporting their own communities.”
In approaching this work, Guo leans heavily on a passion for social justice and the historical and faith traditions that have given birth to such movements in the United States. As a student at Denison University, they studied political theology and examined the intersection of Black liberation theology and the issue of mass incarceration.
“It's not really my experience to speak of, but I'm really passionate about the study of the African-American religious experience because I see it as a wealth of resources for social justice movements,” they said.
Pursuing a Master of Divinity from Yale University and a diploma of congregational ministry from Andover Newton Seminary — where COVID cut short Guo’s path to ordination — resulted in an expansive view of identity and allyship for Guo and the discovery of their own voice as a leader and activist.
Culminating this journey with work at Kenyon that celebrates LGBTQ+ identities while acknowledging the intersection with culture, religion, language and nationality was a natural next step, Guo said.
“My academic work and my leadership work and the position at Kenyon seem like a great fit,” they said. “My position is about strengthening collaborations not only between student affinity groups, but also between the LGBTQ student community and our campus partners.”
As part of that mission, Guo helped design allyship training sessions for students, staff and faculty.
“A lot of what's holding back students from practicing allyship is that people assume that there is a high bar for entry,” they said. “But throughout our curriculum, we want to make sure that allyship is a journey. It is not a one-time event that you can accomplish just by attending a workshop.”
Guo also has organized a free LGBTQ wellness shuttle to take students to medical appointments in Columbus every other week for gender-affirming and other specialized care.
Lynn Hampton, director of diversity, equity and inclusion, said Guo fills a critical role in the office and in serving Kenyon’s LGBTQ community, which, like those at many college campuses, is substantial.
While 7% of adults nationally consider themselves to be gay, lesbian or bisexual, that number rises to 17% for young adults under the age of 30, a 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center found. And hate crimes against the LGBTQ community saw some of the largest increases in the country between 2020 and 2021, according to data reported by the FBI.
“If we think about what’s happening in our country nationally, obviously there are a lot of attacks that are being made on people who are from LGBTQ backgrounds and other marginalized identities. And so as much as possible as a team, ODEI wants to create a culturally affirming, safe, inclusive and welcoming space for all students,” she said.
Particularly valuable in doing this, she continued, is Guo’s background in trauma-informed care, which acknowledges the pervasive nature of trauma and aims to empower students while avoiding incidents that may re-traumatize them.
“It definitely enriches the quality of the programming that we do,” she said. “René is a great addition to the team.”
Guo explained the philosophy further: “What we want to do in our program and moving forward is making sure that, yes, we want to affirm the traumatic history of the LGBTQ community in this country, but we also want to make sure that the joyful, the celebratory aspect of being queer is also being affirmed in our programming.”
That can be done through Unity House — a student-managed space for LGBTQ programming and support — or the many other initiatives taken on by student groups and funded by the Student LGBTQ+ Diversity Fund that Guo oversees.
“Kenyon is a very tight-knit community, and we really want to make sure the job of ODEI is to increase the connection between different campus partners and the constituencies,” Guo said. “We are not in the work of siloing everyone into their own niche identity, but rather it is through recognizing their unique experience that we can come together better and to enrich our campus community by learning from different perspectives.”