A pair of rainbow balloon arches welcomed students to the EMU lawn last Tuesday for the Coming Out Day Festival, a celebration of the LGBTQ community on campus and in Eugene.
The festival, which was organized by the LGBTQA3 Center, along with the Women’s Center and Multicultural Center, featured a variety of student groups and local organizations, a 77-foot-long inflatable obstacle course, therapy puppies, free HIV testing and a coming out door.
National Coming Out Day has been celebrated across the U.S. on Oct. 11 since 1988, according to the Human Rights Campaign. At the University of Oregon, the event was extended into a week-long celebration in conjunction with LGBT History Month.
The festival was “certainly the best-attended Coming Out Week Festival of the last five years, if not ever,” said Max Jensen, who organized the event for the LGBT Education and Support Services office on campus.
“I think it’s important to celebrate coming out and the process and challenges and even the heartache and the pain that comes with it,” said Haley Wilson, coordinator of the support services office. “It is an accomplishment to be vulnerable and authentic with your own identities and to be able to show that to the world.”
The LGBTQA3 Center (short for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, asexual, aromantic and agender) is a student organization located in the EMU that provides resources and support to the UO community.
“Our ultimate mission is to build safe spaces and make the university campus, and Eugene as a whole, just a really safe space for those that identify as queer in any way,” said Lily Lamadrid, a freshman philosophy major who helped organize the event.
Students at the festival were met by a number of both campus and local groups showing their support for the LGBTQ community. Campus groups included the Duck Nest, University Counseling, the Queer, Trans and Intersex Students of Color group, and OUTLaws, the LGBT group for law students, among others. From the Eugene community, Trans*Ponder, a trans-founded non-profit group, and As You Like It, a queer-founded sex shop, were tabling on the EMU lawn with others.
The UO has been recognized by BestColleges.com and the Campus Pride Index as the top campus for the LGBTQ community in Oregon and one of the top 25 colleges in the country in terms of resources and support, Around the O reported.
“I think it’s great that they make UO known as a place where everyone can be accepted,” said Sarah Hartley, a sophomore computer science major who went to the Coming Out Day Festival. “It’s really cool to just have a festival where everyone feels included.”
ASUO President Maria Alejandra Gallegos-Chacón attended the event as well, in addition to putting her name on the OUTList. The OUTList is a list of about 450 students, faculty, staff and alumni at the university who openly identify either as members of the LGBTQ community or as allies compiled by the Division of Student Life and published in the Emerald. Gallegos-Chacón said she recently came out to her dad as bisexual.
Gallegos-Chacón said that while LGBT student groups are leading much of the advocacy work for the community on campus, there is still work to be done.
“Some of my favorite professors are the ones that made it okay to be out and supported me through it, so I do think we have, at times, a good environment,” she said. “But you know, it’s still not perfect.”
Throughout the month of October, the LGBTQA3 and LGBTESS offices are continuing to hostevents, ranging from movie screenings, to LGBTea Time, to art exhibits. More information on these events or LGBT campus resources can be found at LGBT.uoregon.edu.