"My first reaction on hearing that I was named as one of the recipients of the first-ever National Voice and Action Leadership Award was utter shock! I was stunned for about five minutes, and after that, I was emailing every person I knew to tell them the news! I was itching to call someone, but unfortunately I didn't check my email until two in the morning, so I had to wait until the next day to talk to people in person. I was overwhelmed and humbled to be rewarded for helping LGBTQA people, instead of being admonished and persecuted by the people on my campus." ~ Shawna Scott

Shawna Scott is currently a senior at University of Georgia, pursuing a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Ceramics in May 2009.

In her time at UGA, she has been involved all four years with the campus’ largest LGBTQA student organization, Lambda Alliance. In her role as a leader in Lambda Alliance, she has been involved with or directly lead the successful campaigns to add sexual orientation to the Non-Discrimination Anti-Harassment Policy, soft domestic partner benefits, create a streamlined and accessible bias-incident reporting system, and create a trans-inclusive organization. Shawna has traveled all over the country meeting the next generation of queer activists and learning from and working with them on initiatives and problems, as well as to lobby Senators for an inclusive ENDA and the Matthew Shepherd Act. She has reached out as a leader of her student organization to other people and organizations that share similar visions of a world without hate, bias, prejudice, and want.

At the same time, she does not want the momentum they have gained at UGA in the past four years to be lost when she leaves, and so she has taken great pains to provide other students with the knowledge and empowerment to be able to pick up the standard when she must move on. Shawna has always believed that no student is too young or unschooled to do something worthwhile and have great ideas, and that is the sense attitude she have always tried to bring to UGA’s campus community.

In Shawna's words: What do you see as the role of a leader?
Any description or explication I could create can only define one facet of the heartbreaking, fulfilling, maddening, encouraging, life-altering truth that I have experienced as a leader. In what follows I attempt to capture a glimmer of that truth:

• A leader is a chameleon—always changing their manner and their role to fit the current need, dynamically shifting and morphing from one position to the next with grace.
• A leader is the one who knows all the esoteric rules (and laws and bureaucratic processes and policies…) that define what is and is not allowable according to society, and how to follow them all while still shaking up the system.
• A leader will sacrifice. Sacrifice time, energy, ego and sometimes freedom and safety to make change in this world.
• A leader is conscious that they are not the beginning or the end of this struggle, and plans and builds for the future while remembering the lessons of the past.
• A leader makes mistakes—a lot of them. What makes their mistakes different from common ones is that they embrace their mistakes as opportunities to weed out the negative within themselves and are humbled by the chance to do so.
• A leader can speak—to the media, to other activists, to administrators and gatekeepers, to allies, to partners in struggle, to those in need, to and for those who cannot speak for themselves—and also listen.
• A leader can tease out the meaning behind the smiles and words of those who kill with kindness.
• A leader knows how to pep others back up when spirits are flagging.
• A leader is a target, a rallying point, and a force.

Campus Pride asked Shawna to share the challenges she thinks Generation Q (LGBT and Ally Youth) will face or are currently facing in our movement to achieve fairness and equality.

Currently the main challenges to Generation Q are building a cohesive movement, recognizing our social and historical context, and learning to work together without appropriating and exploiting the struggles and achievements of others. In recent news many people have given their opinions on Proposition 8 and marriage equality. There have been marches and protests and thousands of people have donated money, time, and mental health to promote the ideals of equal marriage rights. While I deeply respect the work that these activists are doing, I feel that it is the wrong focus. In my opinion, any action plan the queer community has should be based on those in our community who have the most pressing needs. In my humble opinion, the people who need the most protection and compassion right now are our transgender and transsexual brothers and sisters. Too often they have been lied to by this queer movement, betrayed, fired, and quite often killed. I looked around a room full of my friends the other day and realized that, statistically, at least one of them would probably be murdered because of their trans status in the next five to ten years. That, in my opinion, is the focus our activism should have taken.

This also brings me to the social and historical context. It is ironic to me that so many GLBT organizations are willing to divorce themselves from transgender people when, in reality, our trans members gave us our movement to begin with. From the screaming queens of the west coast to the Stonewall Riots in the East, our movement was begun by trans and gay people working together in solidarity. This is important context that often the younger generation is never told. We are never told about the great contributions to the Civil Rights movement of the sixties by an openly gay man, Bayard Rustin. We do not learn in school to be proud of a legacy of queerness, and that deprives us of our sense of place and location.

Being a leader there will times when the successes you are wanting to obtain will not always be reached. For this reason during the application process Campus Pride asked applicants to describe a time when you were unsuccessful at bringing about positive change and what you learned from this experience, below is Shawna’s response.

As an ally to the trans community, when I began Students Advocating Gender Awareness one of my main goals was to add gender identity and expression to UGA’s Non- Discrimination and Anti-Harassment policy. As a gay activist, it had always seemed important to be included in policies like that. In this instance, though, I learned that my estimation of what another community needs is not an authoritative view. After trying several times to get people excited about and involved in this policy change, I finally started asking some of my trans friends what it is they would like to have and what it is they needed on campus.

I was shocked to find that many of them were far more concerned about other more everyday and mundane experiences than a musty old policy on a website somewhere, They told me horror stories of gendered bathrooms and of endless checkboxes on forms, not to mention legal diploma name changes and required first year on-campus housing with someone of their assigned sex, not their lived gender. It was then that I really realized that many times being an activist is not about taking action blindly for what you think is right, but instead sitting down and listening to the needs and desires of those you advocate for. While I didn’t end up spearheading the push to have gender identity and expression added to the policy, I did learn a valuable lesson about listening to the wants of those you represent, not just your perceived wants.

The lessons that Shawna learned from this experience is a lesson that takes some leaders years to learn and to fully understand. We can all learn something from Shawna’s experience – take the time to listen to those around you, you may just get a better understanding of the direction you need to take to achieve positive change on your campus and beyond.

Recommendations -- What makes Shawna a Leader?
"I believe Shawna has used her voice to take action in so many ways. However, it is important to note that her voice has changed over time. Shawna is a strong and reflective student leader. She challenges others and herself. It has been a true gift to work with a student who knows exactly what to do, but challenges herself along the way. She demands excellence from herself and values feedback from others.

Shawna is a Renaissance woman. She is an activist, a student leader, a singer, artist, and so much more. I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to work with such an amazing person. It is for all these reasons and more that I write a letter of recommendation for Shawna Scott. I know she will continue to learn, lead and inspire others to do so." ~ Michael Shutt, PhD. Director of LGBT Life & Asst. Dean for Campus Life

Campus Pride is proud to recognize Shawna Scott as one of the 2009 National Voice & Action Leadership Award recipients. Congratulations!