Today: Mar 29, 2024

SAGE Center introduces #ProudtoBe event

Donovan Wilson Reporter

The SAGE Center is helping students be proud of their identities in an enthusiastic way even during the ever changing landscape of COVID-19.

National Coming Out Day is Oct. 11 this year. National Coming Out Day, as the name suggests, is a day to celebrate either coming out or helping others come out as part of the LGBTQ+ community. People across the country celebrate it.

“We’re here to celebrate National Coming Out Day and show what we’re proud of,” said Sage Center Graduate Intern Aaron Morabito.

On Tuesday Oct. 6, Aaron represented the Sage Center by setting up a table on the Buley Library patio for their Coming Out Day event #ProudToBe.”

The event consisted of writing on a whiteboard what students were “proud to be” Morabito then takes a photo of the students, holding the whiteboard with a Polaroid camera and the students could keep it. It allowed students to be proud of their identities in a public setting.

This event falls within the mission statement and beliefs that the SAGE Center set out to establish. They intend to help the LGBTQ+ community integrate within the general community more specifically, on campus.

Many events the groups hold are in conjunction with other groups and clubs on campus, like the LGBTQ+ Prism Club.

The SAGE Center has helped push for the involvement of many resources on campus for the LGBTQ+ community, such as the all-gender designated bathrooms, as gendered bathrooms can be uncomfortable for some transgender and non-binary people.

They also help provide research to see how they can make the campus even more accessible for the LGBTQ+ community.

One of the major components of the “#ProudToBe” event was the color selection of the markers. One of the major identifiers of the LGBTQ+ community is the use of different colors, namely the colors of the rainbow either separately or more commonly together as the actual rainbow.

To compliment this, when writing on the whiteboard. The students were given the option of any color they wanted from an array of different shades of markers to fully express themselves.

As with most events on the campus nowadays, COVID-19 regulations were still put into place. Before you touched the whiteboard students had to sanitize their hands and Morabito would be also regularly sanitizing all the supplies being used as well to maintain these regulations.

Naturally, as it was on campus, masks were being worn and everyone was socially distanced from each other. An event centered around taking photos already involves distancing and is an effective way to keep the campus community involved with the resources available to them while still abiding by COVID-19 regulations.

Events such as this tend to bring forth more interaction.

“The SAGE Center has a lot of events coming throughout the year,” said member of the Center, Shaniya Mesilien.

Photo credit: Donovan Wilson

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