Duke will celebrate its annual Coming Out Week with a series of eye-catching awareness activities ranging from movies and music to a Pride Parade Sept. 26 to Oct. 2.
The Alliance of Queer Undergraduates at Duke will host the week’s events in an attempt to raise greater awareness of the issues that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students face. Senior Adam Hall, AQUADuke programming chair, said the week is a celebration of collective pride and LGBT students’ ability to be comfortable with themselves.
The main objectives for Coming Out Week are to raise the visibility of LGBT issues and reach out to the campus community in order to make Duke a more welcoming place for LGBT students, said senior Brian West, president of AQUADuke.
“Duke does have an image of being indifferent or homophobic,” West said. “It is important to raise these issues in order to provide a more comfortable campus.”
Kerry Poynter, Center for LGBT Life program coordinator and AQUADuke advisor, said the two goals for the week are support and community building for LGBT issues and awareness education for the general community—heterosexuals, people who are still unsure of their sexuality and those who are looking for more information.
To meet these goals AQUADuke, in conjunction with North Carolina Pride, has arranged a variety of events starting with Sunday night’s bridge painting on East Campus. In addition, tonight is movie night at the LGBT Center and a Coming Out Week barbecue picnic will take place Tuesday on the Chapel Quadrangle.
“It is important to make the group that is pushed off onto the fringe visible during the week,” West said. “The goal is not to rip people out of the closet.”
Although some of the events focus on community building, others involve more academic and political issues. AQUADuke will sponsor a “Marriage (In)Equality in America” panel with the American Civil Liberties Union Tuesday that will provoke discussion about civil liberties of LGBT people.
The Coming Out Week dinner at the LGBT Center Wednesday will feature a film about coming out issues that was produced by two Robertson scholars from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill followed by discussion among students, faculty and staff in attendance. Thursday’s Pride Café at the East Campus Coffeehouse will include a variety of scheduled performances, drag comedy and an open mic.
The highlight of the week is the Oct. 2 Day of Pride, which opens with the Pride Breakfast at the East Campus gazebo. At 1 p.m., the Pride Parade will begin on East Campus and run to Ninth Street and back. Members of AQUADuke, comprised of LGBT undergraduates, Duke Allies, a group for students who support the LGBT community, and DukeOUT, AQUADuke’s graduate and professional student counterpart, will share a float in the parade.
A concert on Main West Campus will finish off the week’s festivities, with the Relatively Calm and Uncle Jemima, both student bands, opening for The Butchies.
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