A month to honor LGBT is packed full of events to celebrate and connect students
The LGBT Center, with Director Delfin Bautista, is preparing for a month packed full of activities and activism.
“A lot of the initiatives here on campus have been student-driven, student-led and so the fact that Open Doors started over 40 years ago, the fact that we have a center, gender-neutral housing, the trans health-care policy, the preferred name policy — all of these things were student-initiated and I think it’s a powerful way of recognizing the voice and impact that students have,” Bautista said.
For Sarah Jenkins, program coordinator of the LGBT and Women’s centers, she said it’s important to pay attention to the message of the month.
“I think it’s important because of the historical silencing that’s been done with LGBT individuals,” Jenkins said. “When you are dealing with that kind of history, you have to go out of your way to celebrate it when it hasn’t been celebrated for so long.”
Starting off the month will be two speakers. J. Jack Halberstam will be presenting, “A Path So Twisted: Thinking Wildly With and Through Punk Feminisms” and Jennifer Briar will talk gender, race and sexuality on Oct. 2.
Bautista and Jenkins said they are looking forward to a performance by Harvey Katz, also known as “Athens Boy Choir,” that is occurring on Oct. 9, who will also be staying to speak for Oct. 10, “National Coming Out Day.”
The center is planning on taking advantage of the crowds at OU who will convene for Homecoming, Bautista said.
The center, along with other university programs, is hosting a tribute to Maya Angelou Oct. 17 at Galbreath Chapel. Open call for performers for the event is Oct. 6 at noon in Baker University Center 341 and Oct. 8 at 6 p.m. in the LGBT Center.
“If you don’t really have any tie to the LGBT community then I think you are just missing out on sort of a whole culture and a whole history,” said Emma Holman-Smith, a junior studying mathematics and a community coordinator student worker for the LGBT Center.
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