With Pride Month beginning at the start of June, NC State’s GLBT Center is working to celebrate diversity and inclusion across campus despite a reduced number of students on campus.
According to Preston Keith, assistant director of NC State’s GLBT Center, Pride Month is important for several reasons, but primarily for remembering the Stonewall Rebellion of June 1969. This was a series of riots by members of the LGBT+ community that are considered to have sparked the Gay Liberation Movement in the United States.
“Pride month is important for a number of reasons, one of them is that it commemorates the Stonewall Rebellion,” Keith said. “… Thinking about the fact that this was an active form of resistance to the systemic oppression that was happening for queer-identified folks and how folks who identified as queer were not only criminalized, but also pathologized.”
Along with remembering the Stonewall Rebellion, Keith said that the month also recognizes and appreciates all identities.
“But also, looking at the ways in which we are celebrating identities in a very meaningful and intentional way,” Keith said. “Thinking about how we as a country now are designating time, and recognizing this population of folks and saying you are valued, you are part of this community and we want to make sure that you feel accepted and supported.”
According to Andy DeRoin, the program coordinator for NC State’s GLBT Center, the center does not have events during the month, due to the significantly decreased number of students on campus. However, the GLBT Center does spend the summer preparing for Triangle Pride* in September.
“For us it’s really quiet for the most part,” DeRoin said. “If there are students here, they’re summer students, so there is a lot less engagement. We don’t really do a lot of programming, but then the interesting thing is that pride for North Carolina, [Triangle Pride], is in September so we just kind of end up hanging out for the month of June and gearing up for September.”
While there will not be events specifically celebrating Pride Month, the staff in the GLBT Center work year-round to ensure that members of the LGBT+ community on campus have the resources they need.
“The creation [of the GLBT Center] ten years ago was a great first step in ensuring that you have a place on our campus, that there are resources dedicated to this community and its allies,” Keith said.
DeRoin said that the GLBT Center has found success in expanding diversity and inclusion across campus by increasing faculty and staff engagement.
“We’ve really been able to ramp up our staff and faculty engagement which I think has helped shift the university culture a little bit around GLBT inclusion, like the use of pronouns,” DeRoin said. “… We’ve been really intentional about engaging faculty and staff in different programming through the GLBT advocate program, which we’ve seen result in better living and learning experiences for students.”
DeRoin also said that celebrating not only Pride Month, but also diversity and identities on campus has shown that the NC State community is committed to its values.
“It really gives a sense of the University living up to its values of valuing diversity and really creating space where people feel like they belong,” DeRoin said.
According to DeRoin, several local organizations will be participating in pride month, so there are still ways for students, faculty and staff to be engaged and celebrate the month.
NC State’s GLBT Center is located on the fifth floor of Talley Student Union in suite 5230.
*Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to correctly reflect the name of Triangle Pride.
