Organization to Kickoff National BORN THIS GAY Contest with $10,000 in Free speakers, LGBT Event Registrations and other Prizes to commemorate the 10 Year Anniversary all year long

Campus Pride, the leading national nonprofit working to build future lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) leaders and develop safer, more LGBT-friendly colleges and universities, celebrates its 10thanniversary this month. The group is highlighting its decade-long record of achievements and accomplishments and giving back, kicking off their national BORN THIS GAY Campus Tour and a contest including more than$10,000 in prizes.

For 10 years, Campus Pride’s primary objective has been to develop necessary resources, programs and services to support LGBT and ally students on college campuses across the United States. Founded in the Fall of 2001 and launched a year later in October 2002, Campus Pride started as an online community and resource clearinghouse under the name Campus PrideNet. The original founding partners were M. Chad Wilson, Sarah E. Holmes & Shane L. Windmeyer. In 2006, the organization broadened its outreach efforts and restructured as the current educational non-profit organization Campus Pride. As part of the restructuring process, the Lambda 10 Project for LGBT Fraternity & Sorority Issues (www.lambda10.org (http://www.lambda10.org/)) became an educational initiative of Campus Pride.

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Charlotte, N.C. - “Campus Pride is proud to announce our fifth year of LGBT-friendly college fairs. Prospective students want to attend campuses that are a welcoming and safe place to learn, live and grow... finally there are annual fairs to help students find LGBT-friendly colleges,” stated Shane Windmeyer, Executive Director of Campus Pride and author of The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students. “Our LGBT-friendly national college fair program showcases campuses who are LGBT-friendly and who want LGBT & ally students. It sends a clear message: Gay students are welcome, even celebrated on this campus.”

Campus Pride has developed the fairs as a public way for colleges to “come out” and recruit out LGBT students who are an important component to campus diversity. The fairs are also being held in coordination with the LGBT-Friendly Campus Climate Index (www.campusclimateindex.org), the only online resource of its kind that assists colleges and universities in learning ways to improve their LGBT campus life and helps prospective students find a national index listing of LGBT-friendly colleges and universities.

“The LGBT-Friendly Campus Climate Index demonstrates how colleges are ‘coming out’ to provide programs and services for LGBT and ally students. The idea that LGBT student populations are a part of the campus recruitment and retention efforts is just another sign of the changing times,” stated Windmeyer.

Event Details: Saturday, August 27, 2011
1:30 pm – 4:30 pm

Location: Pride Charlotte Festival, Uptown Charlotte on S. Tryon Street, between 3rd and Stonewall Streets

ACLU Asks Court to Stop Camdenton School District from Illegally Censoring LGBT Websites; School District Ignored Requests to Remove Web Filter to Avoid Liability for Unconstitutional Viewpoint-Based Censorship

Campus Pride statement:

"Finding a LGBT-friendly college and learning about valuable LGBT services on campuses should not be blocked for any reason. Every young person should have access in their schools to such online information provided by Campus Pride, especially those seeking safer, more welcoming places to learn, live and grow," said Shane Windmeyer, executive director of Campus Pride. "Our online resources are essential in delivering a message of hope and support -- and in changing the lives of LGBT and ally young people."

ACLU RELEASE ABOUT THE FILING:

ST. LOUIS – The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Eastern Missouri filed a lawsuit against Camdenton R-III School District today after the district ignored warnings that its Internet filtering software had been improperly configured to block access to web content geared toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of LGBT organizations whose websites are blocked by the filter: PFLAG National (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbian and Gays), the Matthew Shepard Foundation, Campus Pride and DignityUSA, a Catholic LGBT organization.

ATLANTA -- Campus Pride was selected as a national partner by the Ben Cohen StandUp Foundation, the worldʼs first organization dedicated solely to combatting bullying, regardless of race, gender, socioeconomic status or sexual orientation.

World-champion rugby player Ben Cohen, the first straight sports star to use his celebrity to raise funds and awareness for the benefit of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community, kicked off his international foundation last week in Atlanta during the inaugural stop of his Acceptance Tour 2011, which will also visit New York, Washington DC and Seattle. Cohenʼs philanthropic work has been covered by The Guardian (UK), CNN and The New York Times among other media outlets.

"We are proud to partner with Campus Pride. They have a long, successful track record of working with educators and students to make campuses more inclusive for and accepting of LGBT people. Raising awareness of and funds for their tireless, on-the-ground work is very important to all of us here at the Ben Cohen StandUp Foundation," said Ben Cohen, MBE, chair of the foundation.

In light of recent high-profile LGBT bullying, the Atlanta-based StandUp Foundation will coordinate and fund specific anti-bullying programs around the world. The StandUp Foundation will partner with four select groups in the United States: Campus Pride, the Human Rights Campaign, the Matthew Shepard Foundation and the Trevor Project. International partners will come at a later date.

“Every human being has the right to love and be loved, and I want to be a bridge between LGBT and straight communities to create a kinder world,” Cohen, the married father of two, says. His cause is as personal for him as it is for his fans; his father was brutally beaten to death in 2000.

REGISTER NOW

WEDNESDAY, MAY 11
3 P.M. EST

$95 per site includes FREE webinar recording
More information online at www.CampusPride.org/webinarseries.asp

FEATURED PRESENTERS:
Shane L. Windmeyer, Campus Pride
with select LGBT-friendly colleges/universities
Dartmouth College
Bryant College
University of Southern California
University of Pennsylvania
Indiana University Purdue University - Indianapolis

Over the last few years, a growing visible population of LGBT youth have emerged for college recruitment efforts. These out LGBT youth want to find colleges that not only meet their academic needs but also provide a welcoming, safe, accepting environment. More and more colleges want to actively reach out to these LGBT youth and share their LGBT-friendly programs and services. Campus Pride provides an analysis of LGBT recruitment strategies, trends and observations from its National LGBT-Friendly College Fair Program and its LGBT-Friendly Campus Climate Index . The webinar will also feature a guests from a few of the leading LGBT-Friendly colleges and universities across the country. Learn how your campus can recruit out LGBT students for the future.

Presented by Campus Pride
in partnership with the CAMPUSPEAK

REGISTER FOR ANY WEBINAR IN THE CAMPUS PRIDE SERIES & HAVE A CHANCE TO WIN A FREE REGISTRATION ($795 value) FOR YOUR COLLEGE TO ATTEND THE CAMPUS PRIDE SUMMER LEADERSHIP CAMP IN JULY 2011. GO TO WWW.CAMPUSPEAK.COM/CONNECT

The next edition of Outbeat Youth airs at 8:00PM on
Sunday, April 24, 2011

KRCB Radio - 91.1 and 90.9 FM - Santa Rosa, California

Coming Up Next We begin by talking with Brad Usselman, one of three gay high school athletes, who started a blog to support other gay high school athletes. "We are a three young adults wanting to change the way teenage gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning athletes are viewed in the sports world. All of us are varsity athletes in high school who are on our own paths to being who we truly are. Brad is a runner, while Ben and Robert play soccer. We met online, became fast friends and realized there was no website out there specifically for people like us, so figured why not us? We invite you to take the stand with us and begin walking the road to equality." Also on this month's show, we meet Mark Snyder who is the communications director for Colage - an organization supporting people with gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender parents. Mark became involved with Colage after coming out himself and then witnessing his father's own coming out.

For more info, visit www.whitehouse.gov/itgetsbetter and www.itgetsbetterproject.com/blog/entry/president-obama-it-gets-better/

Last week, the Rutgers University student newspaper ran an editorial entitled "Media exploits university tragedy." The response nationwide was dramatic. Below is a well-composed comment by Bill Courson left on CampusPrideBlog.org about the editorial. We thought it was worth sharing in a post.

The editorial appearing in today's Daily Targum ("Media exploits university tragedy") is thinly concealed homophobia, from start to finish.

Immersed in heterosexual privilege, an editor or editorial staff such as this has no worthwhile guidance to offer on the subject of gay and lesbian issues; indeed, calling this editorial presumptious falls far, far short of the intensity of the offense given by it to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Rutgers students, faculty, and administration as well as the larger community.

The writers of this piece might be ignored, but better yet, castigated and called to account for their decerebrate impertinence in writing: "… The mistake was that Clementi's death should not have been turned into a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender protest for gay rights and safe spaces at the University … Essentially, an angry mob fending for their rights turned the death of a young boy into a cause for "safe spaces" for gays across the University – all the while, these spaces already existed."

Self-evidently, this is untrue.

Self-evidently, to make such an assertion is ineffably stupid, and is redolent with the fetid ichor of "Focus on the Family."

HELP US SEND A CLEAR MESSAGE AGAINST LGBT HARASSMENT & HATE

Tell Rutgers University President Richard McCormick to take immediate action in the wake of this national tragedy and immediately expel both students in accordance with their own Student Code of Conduct for invasion of privacy.

CALL PRESIDENT MCCORMICK
732-932-7454
OR CONTACT THE PRESIDENT
THROUGH HIS ONLINE PAGE
http://president.rutgers.edu

If you're an Rutgers University Alumnus, please contact the campus online:
http://www.alumni.rutgers.edu/s/896/index.aspx?sid=896&gid=1&pgid=382

“Now is the time to act decisively and send a clear message at Rutgers and at colleges across the country that LGBT harassment and hate will not be tolerated any longer,” states Campus Pride noting it has now been two weeks since Clementi committed suicide.

(New Brunswick, NJ) Campus Pride, the nation’s leading non-profit organization working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and ally college and university students, today called for Rutgers University to act decisively to expel both Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei for invasion of privacy of fellow student Tyler Clementi. Two weeks ago on Wednesday,September 22, Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge posting on his Facebook page, "jumping off the gw bridge sorry."

According to Campus Pride, the Rutgers University Code of Student Conduct prohibits "making or attempting to make an audio or video recording of any person(s) on University premises in bathrooms, showers, bedrooms, or other premises where there is an expectation of privacy with respect to nudity and/or sexual activity,without the knowledge and consent of all participants subject to such recordings."

“Ravi and Wei acted maliciously to secretly tape Tyler Clementi, even posting comments to encourage others to ‘video chat’ and watch. This is an egregious act of invasion of privacy. Both students should be expelled. Period,” said Shane Windmeyer, executive director and founder of Campus Pride. “This act was not simply a prank. It has been two weeks now and neither student has been expelled. Now is the time to act decisively and send a clear message at Rutgers and at colleges across the country that LGBT harassment and hate will not be tolerated any longer.”

Campus Pride’s “2010 State of Higher Education for LGBT People” released last month shows that LGBT incidents of harassment and discrimination are neither rare nor fleeting-- they are real. The national study indicates that one quarter (23%) of LGBQ staff, faculty,and students reported experiencing harassment. An even greater percentage of transgender students, faculty, & staff reported experiencing harassment (39%), often more overt and blatant on campus.

Since the death of Clementi, Campus Pride has received hundreds of emails and phone calls from concerned parents of LGBT youth who are asking for resources to determine safe, welcoming LGBT-friendly colleges and universities. While the national organization recognizes that it takes time for law officers to deal with the investigation surrounding the criminal charges and prosecuting to the full extent of the law, Rutgers University has a clear violation of its own student code of conduct to enforce for the safety and privacy of all students.

“Rutgers University has an obligation to the family of Tyler Clementi and to parents who have gay kids across the nation to enforce the student code of conduct,” said Windmeyer. "The nation is watching what happens.Rutgers should take immediate action in the wake of this national tragedy and immediately expel both students."

For more information about Campus Pride's "2010 State of Higher Education for LGBT People" report, visit www.campuspride.org/research.