Photo Credits: Courtesy of Emma Quirk ’26
By Emma Quirk ’26
Features Editor & Photos Editor
J.T. Martin joined Mount Holyoke’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion as the new director of LGBTQ initiatives and resources in September.
Martin is, as they call themselves, a “white, queer, fat, clinically ill” person, who was a “first gen, low income college student.” They began their college career at Bard College, a liberal arts college in New York. Personal responsibilities meant they needed a full-time job, which they were told was impossible as a full-time student. They took time off from Bard and eventually became a student at Stony Brook University while working full-time at a restaurant.
This was a turning point in their life. “My radicalization point was like, wow, there was something really wrong with this college experience that I was supposed to be so successful in,” they said. They joined organizing efforts around educational justice, wealth inequality, access to higher education and abolition. They also learned a lot about justice and equity, and began “cultivating a critical frame ... understanding [their] own whiteness, [and] what it meant to be a settler in this place” that is called the United States.
At Stony Brook, they were a gender and sexuality studies major. After a recommendation from a friend, they took a class called Histories of Feminisms with Françoise Cromer. “She changed my life. I took her class and ... my mind was just blown open,” Martin said.
While a student, they also were interning at Stony Brook’s Wo/Men’s and Gender Resource Center for outreach. They worked for years with Chris Tanaka, who did a lot of different jobs at Stony Brook, including LGBTQ+ student programming and advising. “I worked with Chris for years, working on the safe space program there ... establishing queer and trans programming, [and] taking students to Creating Change,” Martin said. Creating Change is a conference dedicated to LGBTQ+ organizing.
Martin wrote an honors thesis on critical university studies. They also completed a master’s degree in higher education administration. They decided, “I'm going to study this. I'm going to be at the belly of the beast, do this ... work in higher education ... and build LGBTQ+ resources inside of this institution and to this community that gave me so much.” For Martin, it was a way to give back. “It was a way to, for me, make sure that the gift of community, connection, self growth and awareness was something systemic, something built into the environment as much as possible to be as equitable and democratic as possible,” they said.
This combination of classes and work outside the classroom helped push them toward DEI work. They continued working at Stony Brook post graduation, organizing fully funded doctoral students, working in multicultural affairs and being part of the founding staff of an LGBTQ+ service office. However, once they finished their degree, there was not a clear staffing plan in place for the center, and they looked for jobs elsewhere. This led them to Amherst College where they served as the director of the Queer Resource Center and interim assistant dean of students for identity and cultural resources. They decided to stay in the Western Massachusetts area.
In Fall 2023 they began pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in higher education administration. Last fall, they realized they needed to take a break. “Life offers these moments of real, profound reflection and disruption,” they said. “I can’t do coursework right now ... There’s too many loved ones I care about that I need to be able to show up for and also, [there’s] work I feel called to do.”
This is when they started applying for jobs, including as the director of LGBTQ+ initiatives and resources at Mount Holyoke. Living and working in the Connecticut River Valley, they heard about a lot of the programming that Mount Holyoke’s Office of DEI was working on, and were excited by it. “Being able to join the team in this particular role at this particular juncture, felt really enticing and important,” they said, specifically mentioning the College’s commemoration of ten years of trans and gender-nonconforming inclusive admissions. “Given my experiences, given the skill sets I cultivated, given what I bring to this kind of work, I was like, oh, this feels like a really good match to what I'm hearing about and what I can offer. And I'm hoping that's the case.”
So far, their time on campus has been a lot of acclimation. “When anyone starts a new role in a new campus community, it’s about listening,” Martin continues, “it’s really about what is going on here, who’s doing what? What are the feelings that are lingering from things that have happened or not happened?”
One of their main focuses is working on creating resources, and ensuring people have access to the resources that already exist. “[I’ve been] really focusing on, how do we democratize access to resources?” They have been in conversation with various people and offices across the college to work on this. They have been leading the Inclusive Restrooms Working Group, a project dedicated to determining the accessibility and gender inclusivity of the bathrooms on campus and coming up with recommendations to improve them. This project has been worked on for years, and this working group aims to ensure progress is made. Martin is also a member of the Presidential Task Force for the Trans and Gender Nonconforming, or TGNC, Community.
They also have been part of other DEI programming, like “Trans Resistance and Histories at Mount Holyoke College and Beyond: An Evening with Dr. Perry Zurn” on Oct. 30. Zurn spoke about his upcoming book, “How We Make Each Other: Trans Life at the Edge of the University.” The book looks at trans students, faculty and staff at the Five Colleges. During the event, Zurn focused on Mount Holyoke.
Martin also co-led the organizing of the “TGNC Community Dinner: Honoring Our Past, Present and Future” on Nov. 20 in collaboration with Katie Dick, graduate assistant in the Office of Community and Belonging. This dinner, held in the Jeannette Marks Cultural Center, was “a space for TGNC students, staff, faculty and our loved ones to gather and be able to engage with different activation spaces in the Marks,” Martin said. These spaces included “one that centers history,” a contemporary section with literature from current scholars, as well as a “future dreaming room” with opportunities for art making.
Overall, Martin is grateful for their time at Mount Holyoke so far, and is excited to continue their work. “I’m so grateful to be able to be here and be doing the work with such incredibly passionate people, across stakeholders, I mean, students, staff, faculty, students, alums,” they said. “I’m just so excited to be in community with you all, and being able to help move our community in the direction that people are dreaming and hoping for.”