Tucked away in a corner on the first floor of the Erb Memorial Center sits the LGBTQA3 center, a space specifically carved out for queer students on campus.
One floor above the QA3 office lies the Multicultural Center, a space made by and for ethnic students on campus.
Designated spaces for marginalized students on a mostly white, heteronormative campus are important. But what about spaces for students who identify as both ethnic minorities and queer?
“I don’t always feel safe at the MCC,” Emilia Kok, a fourth year student at UO, said. “And I don’t always feel safe at the QA3.”
There are two queer BIPOC clubs run through the QA3 center: Queer Trans Asian Pacific Islanders Coalition and Queer Trans Intersex Students of Color.
Kok and fellow UO students Zoë Tandingan and Tarini Ramasamy were inspired to start their club, QTAPI, after visiting a conference about trans youth advocacy and activism.
At the conference, the trio heard from QTAPI drag queens who worked to create an event that celebrated queer trans Asian and Pacific Islanders, which eventually became a citywide holiday in San Francisco.
“They were presenting and they said, ‘We want to spread QTAPI week across the country,’” Tandingan said. “Tarini said this is going to be our project, we are going to do this.”
When the trio got back from the conference, they worked against time constraints to get the club off the ground for QTAPI week, a week dedicated to queer trans Asian and Pacific Islanders.
“The hardest part was the time limit,” Tandingan said  “ASUO has their own time frame and the LGBTESS has their own time frame and paperwork. It was a lot to coordinate with everyone.” The trio had to race against deadlines for funding in order to plan events in time for QTAPI week. 
But, the trio had time to brainstorm at the conference. They drafted a mission statement so that people would know what they are about. “Having a statement helped guide us and directed our goals for the event,” Kok said.
The QTAPI mission statement became,“with a lack of representation comes a lack of intersectionality that makes API spaces inherently friendly, inviting, or celebratory of Queer identities and Queer spaces not inherently friendly, inviting, or celebratory of API spaces.”
Intersectionality: When social identities intersect and overlap

In 1989, civil rights advocate and activist Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality. In a nutshell, intersectionality is the point at which a person’s identities overlap, creating unique social experiences for them. Thus, a BIPOC individual who identifies as queer can experience racism, homophobia or transphobia and sexism all at once. Prior to Crenshaw coining the term, minorities who sought justice for racial and gender discrimination lost every court battle. In her paper, Crenshaw stated that in 1976 Judge Harris Wangelin claimed that Black women cannot be a “protected class” within the law. Black women and other women minorities were seen by the courts as either women or their ethnic identity.
Intersectionality came about through ideas debated in critical race theory. In her paper “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex,” Crenshaw focused on three cases concerning issues of racial discrimination and sex discrimination.
In each case, Crenshaw pointed out the court’s straightforward view of discrimination. To the courts, the Black women only experienced racial discrimination. In reality, the law did not take into consideration that these women experienced both racial and gender discrimination.

In an interview with Vox, Crenshaw stated that, “intersectionality was a prism to bring to light dynamics within discrimination law that weren’t being appreciated by the courts.”
Intersectionality eventually became a published term in the Oxford Dictionary and gained more attention during the 2017 Women’s March. Intersectional identities are real and create unique experiences for those who identify with more than one marginalized group.
Tandingan is a part of the Bi and Beyond club and the Filipino culture club. “Before QTAPI, I felt that my identity was split,” Tandingan said. “There wasn’t a merging of those identities in a physical space.”
“When you have limited representation [at a predominantly white institution], intersectional representation is even more limited,”  Tandingan said. “QTAPI is important because it provides more intersectional representation for students and some kind of support system.”
At QTAPI, a person’s whole identity is accepted and celebrated. 
Resources for queer, trans and BIPOC students
According to Kok, access to student mental health counseling on campus can be very difficult, especially for queer, trans and BIPOC students. “I don’t think there’s enough support for students, especially not for queer BIPOC students,” Tandingan said.
“A lot of the support systems for ethnic minority students are made by ethnic minority students. There’s not a lot of support from the UO administration,” Tandingan said.
To Kok, queer BIPOC students are in the inbetween of a limited resource venn diagram. “The UO doesn’t do the best job supporting queer and trans students,” Kok said. “And I don’t think there’s enough support for BIPOC students.”
Community and support are important for students with marginalized identities. Kok, Tandingan and Ramasamy hope that they are providing those necessities with QTAPI. 
“I think that sense of belonging is so important, especially in college,” Kok said. “And that’s what keeps me going to continue creating more events.”

QTAPI meets every Tuesday from 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm. The club’s Instagram can be found here for more information about upcoming events and meetings.