Pride Student Veterinary Medicine Community (VMC) is a student organization that provides a community for LGBTQ graduates in the College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM).
Jamie Constantino, a third-year graduate student in veterinary medicine, said the primary goal of Pride Student VMC is to create a safe space for LGBTQ people and allies within the CVM to come together and experience a sense of community.
“I think as a gay man, I find community in that space, and as a cis white gay man, I know that I have it easier than some other people,” Constantino said. “So I found it very important to get involved in that community and make sure that my entire community felt comfortable in the college.”
Abby Dallas, a third-year graduate student in veterinary medicine, said the club has been a way to acknowledge and uplift minority voices within the veterinary field.
“Especially at the vet school, minorities are extremely underrepresented — it’s very much a straight white woman dominating the field,” Dallas said. “Getting to know friendly faces around campus [has been] helpful.”
Pride Student VMC offers the students in the college an opportunity to socialize with those within their community without the stresses of school.
“It’s nice knowing that you have a group of like-minded people to come to if you need to and partake in fun activities outside of the hardness of veterinary school,” Constantino said. “We will go to a bar and just kind of hang out and have drinks, and we’ll watch movies with LGBTQIA characters, and we’re starting a book club where we read LGBTQIA books, so it’s just fun and relaxing too.”
The organization hosts events annually to fundraise for the club and other external organizations.
“We do an event where we tie dye our lab coats,” Dallas said. “It’s been cool. Also, if you walk around the school and you see people whose lab coats are tie-dyed, you know that they were at that event, they are either queer themselves or an ally.”
Along with fundraisers, the Pride Student VMC hosts workshops surrounding subjects such as pronoun usage in the veterinary community.
“We had a lunch meeting where the GLBT Center from the main campus came over, and we talked about informing the whole college about pronoun usage and how that relates to our clients,” Constantino said.
According to Constantino, the club has been down in membership because of COVID-19 and is in the process of rebuilding. He said in the future, they plan to do outreach in the broader Raleigh area, hoping to reach those outside NC State’s campus.
For more information on Pride Student VMC, visit their Get Involved Page.
