This year members of Northwestern’s Rainbow Alliance weren’t alone in celebrating Monday’s National Coming Out Day.
Instead of hosting one social event, as they do most years, members of the campus support group for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students and their straight allies helped sponsor two activities.
The Coming Out Ball took place at Northeastern Illinois University on Friday, and tonight Rainbow Alliance is showing the film “Yossi & Jagger,” which focuses on two gay Israeli military officers and is sponsored in part by Fiedler Hillel Center.
“Those two events captured what we would’ve wanted to capture with our events,” said Ellen Bird, a Weinberg junior and Rainbow Alliance co-president.
Leslie Stewart, a Weinberg senior and Rainbow Alliance co-president, said the events gave Rainbow Alliance the chance to build networks with other groups, both on and off campus. These connections outside of their group are especially important for gay students, who form a relatively small bunch, Stewart said.
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT political rights organization, has sponsored National Coming Out Day every year since the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
According to the rights campaign’s Web site, the events that take place on the day are “aimed at showing the public that (LGBT) people are everywhere.”
Rainbow Alliance members said the day is less about making coming out known and more about supporting members of the LGBT student population.
“It’s a good day to see that you’re not alone,” Bird said.
Along with the events they co-sponsored, Rainbow Alliance members had executive board members on call at their office on Norris University Center’s third floor to carry out the day’s mission by dispensing brochures and information. They also painted The Rock to support the festivities.
Rainbow Alliance leaders said they hope to increase awareness of the group across campus this year.
In effort to achieve that, members updated the Rainbow Alliance Web site over the summer, and it now receives thousands of hits each month, Bird said.
The LGBT Resource Center, operated in partnership with Rainbow Alliance, also has seen improvements since it opened in January 2004. The center provides resources such as books, magazine subscriptions, pamphlets and two part-time coordinators to the LGBT community.
Since January it has been well-received among students and has built up its collection of resources, said Jonathan Lewis, Communication ’02 and one of the LGBT Resource Center’s coordinators.
Lewis said the center’s strength proves NU embraces gay rights.
“It’s not too difficult for people to look in the newspaper any day and see how real-life issues for gay people are political hot potatoes,” Lewis said. “For Northwestern to say, ‘Yes, we accept you as a gay student and we want you to participate fully in the Northwestern community,’ that is a very important statement for the school to make.”
Reach Francesca Jarosz at [email protected].
