The LGBT Center at the University of Pennsylvania will bear a new name this fall upon the retirement of its longtime director. On Oct. 14, the university will honor Bob Schoenberg for his 35 years helming the center and rededicate the 3907 Spruce St. location as the “Robert Schoenberg Carriage House.”
Schoenberg’s official last day will be a month earlier, on Sept. 12.
“It’s my actual 35th anniversary of the day that I started,” he said. “It might have been more logical to make it the 15th of August or the 30th of August or sometime before the start of the new academic year [but] being the kind of person I am, I thought, Well let’s just round it off at an exact 35.”
When he was a doctoral student at Penn back in 1982, Schoenberg began working as an employee who would be dedicated to the gay and lesbian community, noting that “bisexual” and “transgender” were not referenced terms at the time. Over the next decade, his position developed into a program for LGBT students and then into the full center, where he served as director.
Schoenberg said his work has always been satisfying, noting he has done something different every day.
“Over 35 years, my responsibilities have evolved continuously,” he said. “I think that’s a huge plus for this kind of position. If anybody had told me in the 1990s that I was going to be the consumer of architecture services, that I was going to have a say in the renovations of a 5,500-square-foot building, I would’ve said, ‘You’re crazy. Why would I have to know about architecture?’”
Additionally, Schoenberg noted that the center has become more inclusive to work with more than two-dozen LGBT groups. This includes general groups such as the Queer Student Alliance but also more-specific demographic groups such as Queer Muslims and Allies at Penn (QMAP) and Queer People of Color (QPoC).
“There’s hardly anybody who has only one identity and it’s very important to recognize that people belong to multiple communities, want to feel comfortable in all communities that they belong to and not be forced to choose between going to, say, the African-American Resource Center and the LGBT Center,” he said.
Schoenberg said he hopes the center will continue to provide its core services and programs. Additionally, he would like to see the center support students in the current political environment that he noted “has been sometimes quite hostile to LGBTQ people.”
“I think that students here are relatively sheltered from some of the hostilities in the greater community and [the center should] help them deal with some of those negative factors when they graduate, to understand how they can be part of the activist community, whether through being activists themselves or even providing financial support to community organizations that do activist work,” Schoenberg said. “We’d really like to see that happen.”
After his retirement, Schoenberg plans to continue serving on the advisory boards of the LGBT Health Program at Penn Medicine and the Penn Center for AIDS Research. He also plans to participate in stress-reducing activities and traveling, but nothing is formally in the works.
“I don’t have any big plans,” he said. “I will be staying in Philadelphia but I also have a place in the Poconos and I will be spending more time up there than I’ve been able to while I have been working full-time. I want to spend some period of time relaxing, finding out what it’s like to not get up at a certain time and have a list of things to do associated with work. Although, I always have lists of things to do. So they will probably be more personal than professional.”
Bob Schoenberg’s 35th-anniversary celebration will begin with the rededication ceremony at noon Oct. 14 at the LGBT Center, 3907 Spruce St. All are welcome to this event. A party will follow at Houston Hall, 3417 Spruce St. Visit lgbt35.com to register.