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October 18, 2005
Drag queens strut their stuff
Last Tuesday, Oct. 11 was National Coming Out Day. Coming Out Day commemorates a 1987 march on
Washington which represented the first time that the AIDS quilt was completely assembled. To honor the day, Spectrum, the campus GLBTIA group, put together Coming Out Week, a week-long series of events geared toward the GLBT community and educating the general public about GLBT-related issues.
According to Spectrum president Katelynn Jensen, this year’s Coming Out Week celebration was a huge success.
The week’s events began on Sunday evening with a group-sponsored trip to the Gay 90’s, a Minneapolis bar and dance club geared toward the GLBT community. Monday featured a workshop with OutFront, a GLBT organization, followed by distribution of nearly 500 t-shirts on Tuesday which read “gay? fine by me.”
Wednesday featured a Safer Sex talk with Nurse Barb Bester and a drag show featuring dancers from the Gay 90’s. Queen Morgan Taylor was emcee for the evening. The first queen to appear onstage, Taylor sat down for a little “chit chat” with a member from the audience to loosen up the crowd and kill time so that the other queens could finish getting ready. Needless to say, everyone was more than ready for some dancing when the queens finally arrived and took to the stage.
The queens came out to perform one-by-one and quickly had the crowd dancing to hit songs by artists from Cher to Sean Paul to The Pussycat Dolls.
After all five queens had each performed twice and the wallets of some audience members were considerably emptier, the five performers came onto the stage together to answer any and all questions that the audience could ask. They had nothing to hide.
The week finished with an open house at the new Spectrum house on Minnehaha Ave. Jensen said that a pretty good mix of new and returning students attended the events. “I’m really excited with the first-years in our group,” Jensen said.
In addition to Coming Out Week, Spectrum is working with faculty and staff in putting on “Safe Zone” training sessions for interested faculty and staff. According to Jensen, all the deans have gone through the safe zone training, and several sessions have already been coordinated for other Hamline employees.
Jensen said that there will be a safe zone training session geared specifically toward students that will occur on Sunday, October 23. The Safe Zone training helps equip people with the basic communications skills to facilitate open and safe discussions with GLBT members of the Hamline and outside communities.
Jensen said that she was very pleased with the support of the Hamline community throughout Coming Out Week. “I’ve always felt that Hamline is a safe place for students that are GLBT,” said Jensen.
Spectrum will continue hosting campus-wide activities in celebration of National Coming Out Day in years to come, according to Jensen. With such a positive turnout this year, it seems safe to say that students will continue to attend.
Posted by msveum at October 18, 2005 11:05 AM
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