The Office of Campus Life is working with Queers and Allies to showcase the Pride flag on-campus in honor of GLBT History Month, according to Vice President of the Office of Campus Life Gail Hanson.
Queers and Allies had sent an e-mail to AU President Neil Kerwin on Oct. 6, in an effort to get the Pride flag to fly on every flag pole or alongside both the United States and AU flags sometime in October. However, it is the policy of the university to only fly the AU, D.C. and U.S. flags on the flagpoles, according to Hanson.
OCL is looking for alternative ways to help Q and A, Hanson said.
“I’ve got a couple of staff members involved who have a lot to do with the management of space, so we’re going to try to find a good choice,” she said. “I want to try to accommodate them in a way that works for all of us, and we’re on the job.”?
The office is looking to perhaps hang the flag from the Butler Bridge, where people on the main quadrangle could see it, Hansen said.
Carmyn Rios, communications director of Q and A, said that flying the flag would send a “profound message on behalf of the university.”
“It would signify AU’s solidarity with the queer community and the affirming environment many queer students have found here,” she said. “It would honor the diversity within our student body that students and faculty alike value.”
To start, the group created a petition for members of the AU community to sign. The petition received around 300 signatures. “We took that step not because we necessarily anticipated resistance, although that was definitely a [possibility],” sophomore Rachel Lachenauer, the executive director of Q and A, said. “We just did it so we could present evidence that this was something that was important to the student population, the faculty, the staff and anyone who signed it.”
After organizing the petition, the Q and A executive board collaboratively wrote an e-mail to send to President Neil Kerwin.
“It was not very long at all,” Lachenauer said. “It explained how we feel like it would be a fantastic symbolic representation of the university and GLBT community coming together, as well as tolerance, acceptance and nurturance on behalf of the university. We explained that position on it, why we felt that it would be important, and when we were asking for it.”
Lachenauer said she is planning on somehow getting the Pride Flag represented on campus.
“We’re going to try to find alternate options whether it’s hanging it outside of buildings or somewhere else on the quad, but somehow still pushing for that visual representation,” Lachenauer said. “We’re going to try as hard as we can to make those options work if we can’t get what we initially requested.”
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