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Wednesday, January 27, 2010


Meet Our Interns!


Equality Maryland is excited to welcome three new interns to the EQMD family! Below we've included a post from each of them so you can hear, in their own words, what our work means to them.

Mary Schulte

Hi, I’m Mary Schulte, and I am very excited to begin my work with Equality Maryland! As a sophomore Government and Politics major at the University of Maryland in College Park, I began to become more aware of the gross equality gap that currently exists for LGBT individuals when I was confronted with the realities in a seminar course my freshman year. Through dialogue with instructors and separate research, I grew to learn more about this movement that, embarrassingly enough, I hadn’t realized was going on- but I knew I needed to help. Since then, under the guidance of the Office of LGBT Equity and the truly tremendous undergraduate courses the Department offers, I have become increasingly motivated to commit myself toward working for LGBT equality. As a student, I have served as a member of the Speakers’ Bureau, a group within the Office of LGBT Equity that visits classrooms, fraternities, sororities, and various other campus groups to facilitate discussions on current issues surrounding the LGBT community with the goal of reducing homophobia and heterosexism on campus. Aside from this, I have also participated in many events hosted by UMD’s Pride Alliance, such as the reception of Cleve Jones a few days prior to the National Equality March last October.

Viewing personal conversations and testimony as foundational to forming alliances and changing the current system, I am very passionate about getting involved with community outreach pertaining to LGBT civil rights issues and eager to begin this internship. I was spurred to get involved because someone reached out to me; now, I see it as my responsibility to pay it forward. I hope to be a resource to the organization in whatever way EQMD sees fit, with particular interest in projects that capitalize on building a common ground with diverse racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural communities to contribute to a growing coalition for equality both within and beyond the state of Maryland.

You can contact Mary at marys@equalitymaryland.org.

David McMichael

David is a senior at the University of Maryland, College Park. His primary course of study is Dance, with minors in Spanish and LGBT Studies. While he spends most days holed up in the performing arts center on campus, he still manages to find time to check Facebook, listen to Miley Cyrus (most notably “Party in the USA”), and go to Chipotle. He did manage to escape the performing arts center once, fleeing to Madrid, Spain for a semester full of speaking Spanish, eating tapas, and drinking sangria.

Originally from Philadelphia, David came to Maryland primarily in search of seafood. While pursuing a very non-kosher happiness south of the Mason-Dixon Line, he also discovered an interest in and passion for LGBT advocacy. Due to its proximity both to school and shellfish, he joins Equality Maryland for what he hopes to be an exciting and fruitful internship.

Email David at david@equalitymaryland.org.

Paula McCusker

I have been a student-activist since I was 17, when I started the Gay/Straight Alliance at Perry Hall High School. Since then, I have become highly involved in student organizing and activism at UMBC, and have served both on the board of Freedom Alliance, the LGBTQ student organization, and in the executive branch of student government. I have also become involved in several radical projects in Baltimore City, including Red Emma’s Bookstore & Coffeehouse and their sister project, the Baltimore Free School. I am interested in pursuing a course of study in sexuality politics and plan to pursue a career in activism.

Specific projects I have worked on in my years as an activist have included: raising awareness about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and lobbying university administration to visibly oppose the policy; planning outreach events such as an Allies’ Dinner and World AIDS Day Benefit Concert; serving on university committees related to gender-neutral housing and LGBTQ awareness training; lobbying student government to support the passage of inclusive bills by the MD State Senate; presenting to the UMBC Presidents’ Council about special challenges that face LGBTQ students; and opposing the passage of a speech-restrictive bill by the University System of Maryland. In my experiences with these projects I have built a solid network of relationships at UMBC and gained valuable experience working with organizers, faculty, administration, student-legislators, and the media.

Projects I am interested in pursuing now include issues that impact LGBTQ youth, specifically in college activism and youth homelessness. I hope to create valuable resources based partially in my experiences at UMBC to aid other student-activists in Maryland as they work to create change at their universities. I also hope to do a heavy amount of theoretical and hands-on research related to LGBTQ youth homelessness and work with both local community partners and well-established projects in other states to formulate a better idea of what can best be done to address the problem. I am also especially excited to gain exposure to the political lobbying process during my time with Equality Maryland.

You can reach Paula at paula@equalitymaryland.org.

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