The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Center and the Queer−Straight Alliance (QSA) are this month commemorating GAYpril, a month−long celebration of LGBT culture, by co−hosting events with a wide range of student groups with the goal of raising awareness about LGBT issues.
"It really is a chance for us to highlight our community and our culture and get so many others involved," LGBT Center Director Tom Bourdon said.
GAYpril has this year been marked by a high degree of interaction among groups, Bourdon said.
"We've had more collaboration this year than ever," he said. "Almost every event is the center working with another entity on campus."
GAYpril kicked off on April 2 with QSA's Annual Drag Show, titled Drag Down Cancer, which raised $200 for Relay for Life and featured famous drag queen Jujubee, LGBT Center intern George Murphy, a freshman, said.
Making its GAYpril debut is Saturday's Creating Change at Tufts Symposium. Presentations will focus on topics such as the reconstruction of masculinity, LGBT reproductive rights, LGBT legal issues and LGBT narratives, according to Murphy.
Students were inspired to initiate the symposium at Tufts after attending the National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change. Four individuals from Tufts, including Murphy and fellow LGBT Center intern Katie Hegarty, a sophomore, attended it in February.
"We learned so much about everything that's facing the LGBT community," Murphy said. "What we're doing here on campus on Saturday at the Creating Change Symposium is presenting that what we learned is integral to Tufts and how to accomplish it."
The LGBT Center following the symposium will distribute "Born This Way" T−shirts that students ordered last month to raise money for Re*Generation, an initiative that aids homeless youth. Some of the proceeds will also be used to fund students' trips to next year's national symposium.
Murphy said that a picture of a group of students wearing the shirts will be sent to to Lady Gaga, whose song "Born This Way" inspired the design by Murphy and Hegarty.
In another first, Theta Chi will host the fourth annual Ally Appreciation Soul Food Dinner on April 24, marking the first time the dinner has been hosted outside of the LGBT Center.
Another GAYpril initiative is tied into the Leonard Carmichael Society's American Red Cross Blood Drive, which started yesterday: Members of the Tufts community are invited to donate blood on behalf of men who have sex with men (MSM), who are federally barred from giving blood.
The LGBT Center and Greek community are hosting a competition to see which fraternity or sorority can donate the most blood as part of this initiative, with the winning chapter receiving $400.
The LGBT Center this Thursday will also host a Sassy Gay Trivia night.
"[It's] a fun way to introduce people to a lot of the faculty and talk about things that are going on in the LGBT community," Murphy said.
Hegarty emphasized that while the event was meant to be fun, its main purpose was to educate participants.
"As much as the marketing for the trivia night has been very flamboyant and fun and sassy, the point of the event is to frame important information in an important way," she said.
The annual National Day of Silence is being commemorated on Friday, presenting an opportunity for members of the Tufts community to show their support for marginalized members of the LGBT community, according to Murphy.
"We're asking everyone to remain silent for at least a couple hours in the day to echo the silence of all those people marginalized and hated for who they are," he said.
Tufts will also host the Born This Way LGBT and Ally Party in the Mayer Campus Center on Saturday night.
The event will be the second intercollegiate LGBT and Ally party in Boston this year, and is open to all students from Boston colleges, according to Murphy, who added that the first event was extremely well−attended.
"The space was so small at [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology] that they had to close down the party three hours early," he said.
GAYpril will close on April 25 with a presentation from Professor of English Lee Edelman, also chair of the department. His presentation is titled "Why Queer Theory Teaches Us Nothing: Almodóvar's Bad Education."
"In the past, we've brought in scholars from outside of Tufts, but it's so exciting to realize that we have someone right here on our own campus who can teach us so much about queer theory," Bourdon said.
