The buttons cost a dollar, but not all of the giveaways on the table by the entrance of the Danforth University Center were available for purchase.

“True or false: 36.5 percent of LGBT youth grades 9 through 12 have attempted suicide. 20.5 percent of those attempts resulted in medical care.”

The answer: true. Getting it right was worth a Starburst—assuming the respondent still had an appetite.

Washington University’s Pride Alliance and SafeZones collaborated Friday to celebrate Ally Day, the culmination of the year’s effort to spread education about the diversity of sexualities at the University and in the larger community.

“It’s hard to be accepting of something that you don’t really know about, and I think that a lot of people are passively accepting but not really actually accepting—like, they wouldn’t really go around saying, ‘That’s so gay,’ but they wouldn’t stop someone that says that,” sophomore Danielle Greene, the outreach coordinator for SafeZones, said.

For a week and a half leading up to Ally Day, the two groups sold buttons to students wishing to support their LGBT friends as allies, and encouraged passerby to sign a petition to bring a non-discrimination act and a non-bullying act to Missouri legislature.

“How many states have a non-discrimination act that covers gender identity and expression?”—a law that states that one can’t be fired for having a non-binary gender—read another question.

The answer: 16.

While the University has taken a number of steps to ensure equal treatment for LGBT students and staff, Greene said that students still have a large amount of room for growth.

“Even just learning things such as language—knowing what pronouns you should use for people—and [also] understanding what the different identities are, so when someone says they’re pansexual, you’re not like, ‘Huh? What is that?’” Greene said.

(Pansexuals are individuals who do not consider gender a factor in attraction.)

On their last day of tabling at the DUC, Pride Alliance and SafeZones displayed a poster naming all of the groups that have received their training.

“It sort of celebrates a yearlong campaign of education,” Pride Alliance co-president and sophomore Vinita Chaudhry said.

Leading up to Ally Day, SafeZones offered two open training sessions to try to spread awareness. Greene said about 15 students came to each but added that many of the attendees hoped to extend the training to different groups in which they are involved.

SafeZones facilitator and freshman Nate Eckland said networking through student groups is an important way to continue garnering support for the LGBT community on campus.

“The more the information spreads, the better our campus becomes. When we target homophobia, biphobia, transphobia in groups, we just reach more people,” Eckland said. “Without education, our community can’t really grow, and our goal is to make a more open and accepting and loving community.”

Many students said they were appreciative of the groups’ outreach efforts, noting that Ally Day is particularly important for students on campus.

“I think this is a good way to teach everyone to be accepting,” sophomore Jasmine Williams said. “A lot of my friends are LGBT, and I like to support them.”

“As a member of the LGBT community, I think that today’s really important for all of us; a lot of us have been through a lot in the past, and it’s great to see the school supporting us,” sophomore Austin Vanbastelaer said. “I think you have to get the public involved in order for us to maintain our equal role.”