Sara Smith-Silverman has been a history professor at American River College since the fall of 2016. They teach introduction to LGBTQ+ studies as well as U.S. women’s history. Smith-Silverman is an activist for social and economic justice, including labor, women’s rights and Jewish Voice for Peace. In 2023 they conducted a year-long research project on the life and needs of LGBTQ+ students by interviewing approximately 50 students in the Sacramento area. 

The Express recently spoke with Smith-Silverman about her experience teaching at American River College and how she supports LGBTQ+ students.

What do you enjoy most about teaching?

I enjoy interacting with students in the classroom. I mostly love our discussions about the course content, and when students are able to make connections between history and contemporary affairs. I try to create a classroom atmosphere in which students feel comfortable, as comfortable as possible, participating in the discussion, and a classroom atmosphere that helps to foster a community in the classroom where students, especially from more marginalized backgrounds, have a space to be themselves and to learn about topics that feel relevant to their lives.

So in 2023, you conducted a year-long research project about the lives of educational needs of LGBTQ+ community college students. What impact do you think that left on the students and on yourself? 

I think it’s just the process of interviewing them … help[s] them to understand how important their experiences are. I asked lots of questions about their queerness or their transness or both. But I also focused a lot of my questions on other aspects of their identities, including, around their class status, race and ethnicity, [and] immigration. I asked about religion to some extent.

Through that process of being interviewed, they were able to feel like their experiences matter. I think what I learned also is I’m a little older — I mean, I’m not that old — but I am middle-aged. And I was interviewing students who are primarily, though not exclusively, who are like 18, 19, early 20s. And I learned stuff about contemporary queerness and transness, about like, what it means to be nonbinary, for instance, in ways that I hadn’t thought deeply enough about prior. 

I learned also one surprising finding from the interviews was about the intersection of queerness and autism, and then also about the experience of queer disabled students. I learned quite a lot from talking to students about their experiences, and I found that to be incredibly valuable, and it’s informed how I teach going forward. 

So what issues are you passionate about and why?

Well, I’ve been involved in the group Jewish Voice for Peace since October of 2023, since Israel began its genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. And as somebody who’s Jewish, I got involved in that group to make clear, alongside other folks, that what Israel was doing was not in the legitimate name of Jewish people — that you don’t colonize, occupy and commit genocide against Palestinians in the name of Jewish people. … That’s why I got involved. I was just horrified by what was happening to the people of Gaza. … I’m also involved in Faculty for Justice in Palestine, in the Los Rios district. And so we have been organizing educational events … to increase awareness about what Israel is doing to Palestinians, as well as the fact that we are, as Americans, complicit in what Israel is doing. Because we’re funding, basically, Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people and its ongoing occupation of Palestinian territory.

What are some of the works you do for LGBTQ+ students?

I’m the only person who teaches currently the Introduction to LGBTQ Studies class at ARC. I’m currently teaching two sections of the class this semester. It’s the second time that two sections have been offered. . … It is taught by other faculty members at other colleges. 

I’m helping to get the Queer Student Group off the ground. I’m also doing advocacy work around the needs of queer and trans students more generally. So there’s something that’s happening at ARC that I’ve been rather upset about. You know, I think that a lot of faculty and staff really care about the needs of queer and trans students, but I think we could be doing more to support queer and trans students. And so I saw that there hasn’t been any coordinator for the Pride Learning Community. And the pride Learning Community is similar to other learning communities that support marginalized students, right? … 

The Pride Learning Community is supposed to be supporting creating a community, learning community for queer and trans students. The administration, I would say, let it become inactive because they refuse to be to show any flexibility with regard to the coordinator position. So I been disappointed at the process. 

Can you tell me some of the resources students in the LGBTQ+ community can find at LRCCD?

First and foremost, the Pride Center at ARC, and the pride centers that exist at the other campuses, that’s an incredible resource. … Then, last semester, one improvement that we’ve seen is that the Los Rios District established a contract with the Gender Health Center to provide mental health counseling for queer and trans students. There’s a contract to provide free mental health counseling, and that was very exciting. I think we need on campus support to make it more accessible. 

The Gender Health Center is offering Zoom appointments as well, which is great, as well as in person appointments, and they’re free. It just would be a little bit more accessible if we would hire a mental health counselor to support students on campus. And then I know at SCC, last I heard, there’s a part-time mental health counselor, specifically, who’s queer affirming, and so we could use that at every campus. And then, aside from that, a lot of students, because of hostility on the part of their family members, are on the verge of homelessness or are actually homeless. 

What is your advice for LGBTQ+ students after the Trump administration?

My advice for queer and trans students is to find other queer and trans students and to find allies, like real allies, for support, and, I think, an affirmation and their identities in this like horrifying and very scary context. I think that’s, first and foremost, not to suffer in silence — to actually find that kind of support through community in addition to accessing counseling services. 

But I think the emphasis, my emphasis, would be on organizing. I think we need a social movement to resist the transphobic and queer public policies of the Trump administration. The developments at the federal level are going to affect us in California, and besides that they’re already affecting folks in other states where they’ve been passing anti-trans and anti-queer laws for several years now at the state level. But you know, the effects of what’s happening at the federal government are going to filter down to the state level, and we need to recognize that, we need to kind of be in solidarity with folks across state lines, to resist what’s happening. 

You can only effectively resist what’s happening if you come together in organizations, you plan out a political strategy to fight some of the developments that have been happening recently. And clearly, there are really great organizations that are doing some of that work, but I think we need more grassroots activism to build momentum to be able to kind of counter the hostile messaging, the hateful messaging, and to educate folks about who trans and queer folks are, and to pass laws that are queer affirming and trans inclusive as we as we move forward. 

Obviously, [we need] to vote the current administration out in four years, and to make sure in a couple of years that we vote in representatives who are queer and trans inclusive, who aren’t bigots. I think we need to ultimately come together in solidarity across lines of difference. So we need to be in solidarity with the immigrant rights movement, in recognition that what’s happening to immigrants, in general, is horrifying as well, that we should be welcoming immigrants to this country, not criminalizing them. These are human beings, right? We’re not treating them as if they’re human beings. 

Of course, there are plenty of queer folks who are also immigrants. So rather than being kind of siloed in our activism, I would like it would be great if we could come together in solidarity, to in a united way, to to fight these developments. I think what’s really happening at the national level right now is incredibly scary. And I think Trump’s politics, his racist politics, his transphobic politics, his sexist politics, and like his politics against reproductive rights and his anti-working class politics, he’s not an ally of working people, right? He’s an authoritarian as well. I think it represents a move towards fascism that’s very scary in this country, and we shouldn’t be, you know, passive in the face of the rise of fascism.

So what are the challenges you want people to be aware of students in the LGBTQ+ community face in college life?

Well, one thing is clear is that I think our curriculum is not as inclusive of queer and trans people’s experiences, including through an intersectional lens. And so often, when queerness comes up, it might just be about gay people’s experiences. Trans people aren’t included enough. And then the experiences of queer and trans people of color, the experience of queer and trans disabled folks and neurodivergent folks aren’t really included. And when you do that, I think queerness gets read up as white. … 

We need policies that respect people’s affirmed names and pronouns in the classroom. We need facilities that are trans inclusive, so we need locker rooms where trans people can change and feel safe and so that they can avoid harassment. And I’m pretty sure that across the district, we don’t have locker rooms that are inclusive of trans people. [Los Rios Chief Strategy and Communications Officer Gabe Ross confirmed with the Express that there are no transgender-exclusive locker rooms in the district. Each college only has gender-neutral restrooms available.]  

I’ve talked to students who say that they don’t play sports because they have nowhere to change or shower, and that they would be like sweaty the rest of the day if they were right. … One way our district could be a lot better is that it’s refused to establish more all-gender bathrooms. … I think we should be a refuge for our trans students, and so we need to do a better job.  

I also feel like we could provide legal support directly to our trans students who are scared right now, as well as to our undocumented students who are scared and our trans undocumented students right who are scared. … So what are their legal rights? Legal rights clinics for trans students help filing for a change to their birth certificates, to their IDs, funding, grant money to help students change their names, even grant money to help them receive gender affirming care. I think that would be great. I think we could be doing and, you know, providing queer affirming housing solutions. Students are always coming to me asking about housing, we do have some community resources, but I feel like we don’t have enough. 

What are your hopes for the future of LGBTQ+ college students?

My hope is that I find hope in all of us staff and faculty who are showing that they care who are trying to be inclusive in the classroom. My hope is for a future that recognizes the beauty of being trans and what it means to be trans, a future that is free when it comes to gender rather than restrictive. We shouldn’t be restricted to a binary. We should say we are free to be who we are, who we want to be and who we are. My hope is that queer and trans students find love and affirmation in community and in resistance. So and I think I see some promise there. We are in disappointing times, but I do see some promise there in the actions of folks that I know and I think there is a lot of hope. We just have to realize that hope really.

This Q&A has been edited for length, clarity and flow.

Express Exchange is a Q&A series that highlights the people in the Sacramento City College community. Each conversation explores unique experiences, challenges these people overcame and perspective into what matters most in their personal journey. This series provides a space to connect and share meaningful experiences. Have an idea of someone for us to interview? Contact our editors at llentz.express@gmail.com and njeffery.express@gmail.com