So tonight is my last taste of sweet, sweet freedom... the Spring Quarter starts tomorrow. This entire week I've basically gotten to spend punishing my tailbone by sitting on my butt for extended periods of time, either in bed with a book, in my computer chair vegetating over old episodes of Buffy, Xena, and the X-Men cartoon from the 90s (PS: Did I mention I'm a crazed X-Men fanboy?), or other various prone, non-contributing-to-society positions. Tomorrow also means the resumption of my duties as Vice President of Rainbow Alliance. I'm actually kind of excited to get back to work. I get to reconnect with some fresh faces I'd only begun to meet, Spring quarter is our busiest quarter for events, and I get to take Intro to Sexuality Studies, the flagship class being tested to see if Wright State should offer a Sexuality/LGBT/Queer Studies major.

There are some drawbacks however. This year we seem to be facing more trouble than usual with our campus's Christian organizations. This is not to say that Christians are anti-gay, or that the Christian students in general are anti-gay... but there has been concerning activity with the Christian organizations on my campus lately. Last quarter, we got an e-mail from a former member of the main evangelical group on campus notifying us that members of the organization routinely pray for God to strike us down and destroy us, and the President of our Christian Student Union followed our President into our organization's office one morning and told her that God came to him and told him to save her, and to top all that off the Campus Bible Fellowship organized on Ash Wednesday to confront those on campus who weren't wearing ash and asked them why they had chosen not to accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior.

Now for any of us who have been active in the community, whether on an activist level or simply being out, we know that there can be a certain abrasion between homosexuality and many mainstream religions. The question my org has to deal with in the near future is how do we deal with the recent outbreak of anti-gay sentiment? Well we met and discussed it numerous times, and came to some conclusions and some ideas. First, we know we have to deal with the issue of people directly attempting to convert or "save" our members. This time it was the President, and she knows how to handle herself... but the more direct concern is that the CSU President following anyone to our office violates our Safe Space policy, and creates a hostile environment for anyone who might seek our services, or join our group. So, we talked to our advisor and elevated that situation to the administration... it seems best that something of that nature be handled by those above us, especially as it concerns an exchange between two student leaders. As far as the evangelical organization praying to destroy us... well first off that has only be hear-say, and really what students do in their free time is up to them. If some religious students want to pray to destroy us, it is their right and I'm content to let them have it. If it elevates to a more dangerous or threatening behavior, then we can and should take action to protect those we represent. As far as we know at this juncture though, it was only members of the org separate from the organization itself and it did not occur during the organization's meeting time. So for now we watch and wait, and keep our ear to the ground... it's been quiet thus far, so it seems that will blow over. Now the Campus Bible Fellowship issue, well that's not a direct LGBT concern, it's just heaped on to these other issues and definitely creates a negative campus environment, so we retrieved testimony from our members who had been confronted, and passed it on to our administration, along with account from other student orgs and a demand that this be addressed to insure the safety and religious freedom of the general campus population.

One of our members also runs a political committee within our organization, with the intent to hold debates or panels on our campus discussing LGBT issues in politics and at the national level (i.e. gay marriage/civil union, employment discrimination, gender neutral housing/bathrooms, etc.), and we have discussed holding a panel with some members from the Christian organizations on our campus to discuss homosexuality and the bible, and the possibility of bringing a speaker on to the campus to discuss homosexuality within the context of the bible. The speaker I have in mind is the Reverend Mother Meredith Moise, who is one of the many amazing speakers we had at the 2008 Campus Pride Summer Leadership Camp, and one who both objectively and eloquently discussed religion to a diverse audience, in a way that I didn't feel degraded my personal beliefs (which by the way are quite Atheistic). So we have some ideas for working toward a better relationship and understanding with our campus Christian orgs, while at the same time defending our right to be here and be who we are... I'm feeling pretty hopeful.

Beyond that though, we also have Hate Crime Awareness Week coming up in mid-April, and I'm definitely excited for that. I'm going to be in charge of an Art Show on campus, held in our student union, and hopefully with a live band and some spoken word artists to go with the still pieces of art hanging in the adjoining gallery room. The theme is going to be "Speaking Out", using art as a means to communicate what you have to say. My goal with this theme is to make it accessible to all artists on our campus, which will help bring people outside of the LGBT community into what we're doing, and really show off as part of the entire campus community. I really like doing events like these, because it feels good when working in an LGBT organization to step outside of our rather small focus and make everyone notice us as people and students just like them... and then in May we get to show them how different and awesome we are (but I'll get to that in the next paragraph). Also in Hate Crime Awareness Week we have Alison Bechdel coming to speak at our campus, in conjunction with Quest for Community, which is a series of speakers who address diversity on our campus and in our local community (which just so happens to be paid for by the President's office, so we get her essentially for free!), and we're going to be planning a number of other events on campus to raise awareness about hate crimes and diversity on campus, including some collaborations with other student organizations like the Black Student Union, which I love to do. Collaborating with other organizations on campus is the key to success, always remember that. If ten people can do good work, twenty can do something amazing.

Also coming up this quarter we have our annual drag show, benefiting the AIDS Resource Center of Ohio. This is our flagship event of the year, where we get an awesome queen to come host, and have students and local talent perform, with 100% of the profits going to the ARC. I love this event! First off, it's our night to shine in the local community, out at one of the local gay clubs, and we get to do something amazing while we have a blast. Second, we raised a ton of money last year (my first year with this organization), and I can't wait to see how much we raise this year, especially with it going to such an amazing organization. This year we're off to a slow start in planning, and much of that has to do with some administrative red tape booking the venue, and trouble finding our host (We always go with the Entertainer of the Year first because you know they're a great entertainer), but we're hopefully back on track, and I'm going to take this as a learning opportunity to see what I might have to adjust to make next year's show even more amazing than I know this one will be.

That's all for now... I've got to get my butt in bed if I'm going to be any good for class tomorrow!