Behind the Scenes of Pride Week

By Broadside Staff Writer Emily Sharrer
Photo by Broadside Photographer Josh Griset

Since the mid to late 1990s, the Office of Diversity Programs and Services, in conjunction with other campus organizations and offices, has created a line-up of events focused on issues facing LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning) students and the surrounding community.

Although last week marked the 12th year of Pride Week, there are still a couple of lingering myths that need to be cleared up.

• First, Pride Week is not just for students who may identify as LGBTQ.
• Secondly, while the drag show might draw students to the Johnson Center every year in masses, there is definitely a lot more to the week, and to the LGBTQ community, than men in tights and high heels.

What Pride Week is, according to Ric Chollar, Assistant Director of LGBTQ Student Affairs and faculty advisor of Pride Alliance, is a coming together of students of all sexual orientations, races and religions to talk about issues that are integral to all college students.

“It [Pride Week] is to give the whole campus a greater understanding and appreciation of what is wonderful about the LGBT community,” Chollar said. “It is to give members of the LGBT community a chance to be able to celebrate, to be able to come together, to be able to party, to be able to learn the many aspects of community building and it is for all of us to learn from each other.”

Chollar as well as Alex Gant, a senior history major, a Co-Chair of GMU Pride Alliance, and Pride Week organizer, feel that Pride Week this year accomplished those goals. Whether for a class, out of curiosity or for the third time, students came out to the events, which tackled issues such as HIV, love and faith to show their support. This year, as with each progressing year, organizers say they have seen a rise in attendance.

“There was not a single event that was less than 25 people,” Gant said. “It has been really great and I am happy to see so many people come out, whether they are Pride Alliance members, whether they are just friends and allies or people we have never seen before.”
“It has gone from relatively small to well-attended to great,” Chollar said.

Planning for the event began in January and boasted more students than had ever been involved in the past, according to Chollar. “The organizations on this campus this week have been amazing,” Gant said. “Every organization on this campus has been super supportive and we haven’t gotten any negative feedback that I know of this week.”

“In my opinion it is probably the best pride week in terms of the spectrum of different things that we have done,” Gant said.

Though new events or variations on events like this are put on each year, there is one thing that has remained the same for at least the six years that Chollar has been in charge and that is the putting up of signs around campus displaying the names and stories of either LGBTQ people or allies.

Together, the committee chooses people of different races and from different time periods that are role models of sorts for the LGBTQ community. This year there were over 100 signs around campus.

“In some ways I think that’s the most powerful activity of Pride Week for a number of reasons. It is a project where a bunch of levels of people get something out of it the people who are working on the project learn our history and what people that have come before us have gone through. It is also something where faculty staff and students who would not ordinarily choose to come to a program are also being exposed to learning about the community,” Chollar said.

Even more important than being entertained, students who attended Pride Week had the chance to come away with some humbling knowledge about people they may have misjudged in the past.