We have come to MARCH!
One Message: Full Equality under the Law!

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Campus Pride & OUTmedia Establish Partnership for Education & Activism

Say "Campus Pride" when booking; Nationally-recognized agency partners with Campus Pride for greater LGBTQQIA diversity through entertainment and programming at colleges and universities

CHARLOTTE, NC; September 3, 2009 – Campus Pride (www.campuspride.org) and OUTmedia (www.outmedia.org) announced today a partnership to support lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and ally (LGBTQQIA) students and to promote visibility of out LGBTQQIA artists and entertainers at colleges and universities across the country. As part of the partnership, OUTmedia pledges to support Campus Pride programs and services with every dollar spent with booking this year.

OUTmedia has been key in Campus Pride’s growth and sustainability. This past July, Campus Pride honored OUTmedia’s founder and president Shelly Weiss with the first-ever Campy Award for “Distinguished Service to LGBT and Ally Youth.” As a result, Campus Pride encourages colleges and universities to invest in OUTmedia, a social enterprise that for 15 years has taken enormous risks, and devoted itself to being on the forefront of promoting queer visibility on US campuses, and that continually invests in LGBTQQIA youth.

“OUTmedia, for over a decade, has transformed campus communities with a diverse understanding and unparalleled vision for queer-affirming entertainment,” said Shane Windmeyer, executive director and founder of Campus Pride. “OUTmedia believes in what we do and we appreciate this partnership to support our work across the country.”

You know I usually do all the traveling. Seldom do I have someone or a group come visit Campus Pride in our home office of Charlotte, NC. But this week, Campus Pride had the pleasure of hosting Chris and Potter, the two young adults going state by state Driving for Equality (http://www.drivingequality.com).

Both Chris & Potter are really quite amazing. Driving Equality is a 100-day, 16,000-mile, 48-state trek across America to collect stories from LGBTQ people in an effort to raise awareness of the various forms of discrimination faced by our community in each state of the nation. Highlighting the differences in rights, laws, and amendments between the states will shed light on the current social standing of queer individuals today.The goal is to create a dialogue about the disparities across the nation, and what can be done to end discrimination for all.

During the 100-day trip, Chris and Potter meet with LGBTQ community organizers, activists, and any citizens willing to talk. While they were in Charlotte, NC, I organized a meeting with Qnotes, our LGBT Carolina news source and our LGBT Community Center. You can follow Chris and Potter online at the Driving for Equality site (http://www.drivingequality.com). There is actually pics from our visiti and a small video clip sneak peak. Check it out!

The final project, after the 100 days, will culminate with a Driving for Equality documentary.

Well, Campus Pride wishes Chris and Potter safe travels and appreciates them dropping by the Carolinas! You should look up their map and email them if you want to meet up! Campus Pride gave them rainbow cookies for some queer junk food along the way!

The state of Florida has never been terribly good at funding public education; much political oversight on the issue is born out of a combination of conservative politics and catering to retired transplants to the state. The recession, however, has sent the status of education here spiraling downward.

The University of Florida, the flagship school in the state, is taking major hits thanks to the budgetary crisis at the state level. The President of the University, Bernard Machen, required every major sector of the University to submit a budget proposal that accounts for a 10% reduction in budget. The results of this proposal request can be found here: http://budget.president.ufl.edu/.

Since 1996, high school and college students have united every April to protest against homophobia. This protest, the National of Day of Silence, entails an entire school day of silence, acknowledging the many gay youths who remain silent as a result of the fear and anxiety brought upon by intolerance.

This protest, started at the University of Virginia by a student, Maria Pulzetti, consisted of 150 students participating in the silent protest. The following year, Pulzetti teamed up with then 19-year-old Jessie Gilliam to make the protest so that it would be done at campuses across the country, thus making it the National Day of Silence. Nearly 100 campuses participated that year, and as time went on the number of schools and participants escalated, especially at the high school level. In 2008,

The Day of Silence played an incredible role in the gay rights movement in the 90s, but now, especially in the aftermath of Prop 8, it’s time activists come up with a more proactive demonstration.

Having been a participant in the Day of Silence since high school, I know the amount of dedication it takes to remain silent. Nasty peers eviscerate you mentally—and although I haven’t experienced it, physically—for taking a stand. Some teachers think you’re participating in the event with the intention of getting out of participating in class, and therefore treat you like a delinquent. The rest are confused and trying to understand the point of another day of silence.

The Westboro Baptist Church, for those of you who don't know, is an extremist group famous for things such as the "God Hates Fags" slogan, protesting soldier funerals, and apparently now making death chants at President Barack Obama. At this point it's hard to take these guys seriously for me really, because the only attention they get is either comical or just highlighting how extreme and out there they are. However, Kellan Baker in this article is my new hero. He put together the "Phelps-a-thon" (Phelps is the family name of those behind the WBC) which raised money as long as the WBC protesters were at the White House, netting $500 for Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence. FANTASTIC! And to top it all off, Fred Phelps is stilled banned from the UK. I don't often get chances to say this in life, but... neener neener neener!

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.

Introduction posts always seem so, well, introductory. But, as Julie Andrews says, “let’s beginning at the very beginning. It’s a very good place to start.” And with this being a Q&A blog, I think I’ll do this interrogation style.

Hey, who the heck are you, anyway?

My name is Andrew and I’m finishing up my BA in Human Ecology (it’s really better if you don’t ask, “why?”) at some point in the next year. I attend a tiny liberal arts college on the Downeast Coast of Maine, though I’m originally from Los Angeles and I’ve lived in Alexandria, VA and Boston, MA at various points. I started doing activism the summer after 7th grade and I currently run Spectrum, the LGBTQ group on my campus. I am also on The Trevor Project's Youth Advisory Council, the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition’s Youth Committee and last summer I was an intern at BAGLY, the Boston Alliance of GLBT Youth.

So what makes your activism clock tick?