Hoping to educate students about GLBTQIA issues and to promote diversity, the Washington University Pride Alliance held its Awareness Week this past week.
“There is a role for everyone within Pride Alliance,” junior Audrey King, co-president of Pride Alliance, a multi-focus LGBTQIA group, said.
Pride Alliance initiated the week with a coming out workshop hosted by Safe Zones. The workshop was held in the Pride room in the Women’s Building.
At the event, a representative of Student Health Services spoke with students about constructing a plan for announcing one’s sexual and gender identity to peers and parents.
Students at the workshop discussed strategies for coming out, including ways to support someone planning to come out.
“I think it is really nice to have that safe place where people understand,” King said.
Throughout the week, Pride Alliance held a series of discussions on sexual identity and the LGBTQIA community.
This past Wednesday in Ursa’s Café, the group also commemorated the 10th anniversary of the Matthew Shepard hate crime in Laramie, Wyo. Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, was murdered in Oct. 1998 by two men on their way home from a bar.
Awareness Week ended this past Friday, the eve of National Coming Out Day.
“I think it helps people in a different way, maybe less directly than the workshop,” King said.
The last event of the week was a masquerade-themed semiformal dance, titled Midnight MasQueerade and held in McMillan Café. The 125 students who attended were offered free masks for the semiformal.
At midnight, Pride Alliance played Diana Ross’s hit song “I’m Coming Out”—a song adopted by the gay community for coming out.
Midnight MasQueerade also commemorated Connecticut’s legalization of gay marriage, which the Conn. Supreme Court ruled in favor of on Monday.
Pride Alliance has previously held its annual semiformal GAYLA in spring, but the MasQueerade marks the first semiformal event Pride Alliance has held in the fall.
Students reactions were largely positive.
“It’s awesome,” freshman David Levine said of the activities. “A lot of education still needs to be done. There should be education on how intolerant people really are. This is not going to go away by itself.”
“I think there are always going to be people who are judgmental. Hopefully stuff like Safe Zones and programs like that can help,” senior Archana Varma said.
Varma questioned, however, how effectively Pride Alliance would be able to inform and target the University’s student body,
“Sometimes those programs target people who are already informed and don’t really need them,” Varma said.
However, freshman Michael Laks observed the week was not well publicized.
“I think they should have said more about it. I didn’t even know about it,” Laks said.
Residential advisers were, however, notified about Pride Alliance week via e-mail, and many passed the message on to their floors.
Pride Alliance has more activities planned for the near future, including a discussion on sexual health.
