This October is GLBT History Month and NC State’s GLBT Center is celebrating it in a variety of ways, focusing on their theme “Strategic Activism: Fighting on All Fronts.”

According to the GLBT Center’s website, the theme focuses on the various models of activism, resistance, advocacy and solidarity within intersectional social justice.

Preston Keith, the GLBT Center’s assistant director, said that the theme was chosen because they “want people to understand that there [are] different ways of achieving” intersectional social justice.

Keith said that during the month, the Center will be looking at different ways they can raise awareness this year, especially using art forms.

“We’re talking about resistance as an art form,” Keith said. “Histories of social movements, different social issues people can be a part of, using narratives and comics as a way of raising awareness and talking about issues, and and [we’re] really just trying to bring to the social consciousness some of the issues and their impact on the GLBT and other marginalized communities.”

Many of the events being hosted by the Center reflect this topic and the message the center’s leadership hopes to get across throughout the month.

One of the month’s biggest events, titled Artivism: Advocacy and Activism through Art, brings in local artists’ work to be exhibited in the African American Cultural Center and discussed as a way of addressing the many issues marginalized communities, like that of the GLBT community, face.

This event falls in line with the many workshops the center is hosting, as they all work towards the general goal of increasing awareness among NC State students.

These workshops, such as Social Movements and Social Change, led by the Center’s program director, Andy DeRoin, will focus on educating individuals about the GLBT community’s history, its past social movements and the current manifestations of these movements, among many other topics.

Keith said that beyond attending the events themselves, he encourages students to get involved throughout the month and beyond by thinking critically about the issues the Center is trying to acknowledge.

“It’s one thing to think about ‘I want to make the change’ [and] then also realizing what that change looks like for yourself” Keith said. “You need to look inside and realize what parts of you that might need to change, and what things you might need to unlearn, in order to be more inclusive and intersectional.”

Outside of creating awareness about the problems faced by the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, several of the events the Center hosts during the month of October and the rest of the academic year aim to both celebrate and support those within this community.

The GLBT Community Alliance (GLBTCA) is celebrating National Coming Out Day on October 7, by painting the Free Expression Tunnel with all those who wish to join.

In addition to the GLBTCA, the GLBT Center here at NC State advises and supports six other student organizations. These include T-Files, QTPOC, oSTEM, AcePack and Bi/Pan @ NCSU.

“The student organizations … are open to everyone except for QTPOC, which is our [group for] Queer and Trans People of Color, and T-Files, which is our transgender peer support group,” DeRoin said. “Those are meant to be peer support spaces, so [they ask that] students that are interested would identify in some way with those umbrellas or be questioning their identity.”

The rest of these organizations are open to all students who identify as GLBT or an ally, and they work to provide safe, welcoming environments for those students, to provide access to communities of people that they can relate to and to provide them with resources within NC State and its surrounding communities.

Other signature programs the Center hosts include Trans Awareness Week, the GLBT Holiday Potluck, the second annual Queer Youth Leadership Summit in February, an event aiming to provide graduating high school students with the tools they need to make an impact on the world around them, and many more.

Students can find out more about events sponsored by the GLBT Center here.