Last Wednesday at 5pm, the University of Wyoming Multicultural Affairs (M.A.) Office along with the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Office, Gender and Women Studies Department, and the Queer Community Coalition (QCC), held the Queer Barbecue Welcome Back Event to welcome back and celebrate the new semester with students, especially those identifying as LGBTQ+. There was live music, free BBQ, yard games, and LGBTQ+ and allied organizations that tabled.
Tyler Wolfgang the chief organizer of the event explained why they had this event, “I work on creating and putting out queer programming on campus and a lot of universities do welcome back events for their queer communities. I wanted to make sure that we had a welcome back event the first week of school for our community; and we wanted to make it big and make it central”.
Wolfgang also noted that it was important to highlight LGBTQ+ groups that are around campus, Laramie, and Wyoming, “LGBT groups around the community do a lot of work and we wanted to give them the opportunity to give out their resources and information so that all LGBT folks that are coming here to campus this fall can be best prepared”.
A solid crowd of people attended including freshman Jaden Coody who turned out for the event who came to “share pride and show pride through learning” and commented about the one of the organizers, “Multicultural Affairs is a really nice for everyone to go to if they need support or just to talk to people”. Fern, a senior who attend with a friend because, “I’m bisexual and my friend Emily invited me. It’s been a lot of fun, we got a lot of free stuff and I love all the tables and learning about what everyone is doing. It’s great”.
Many LGBTQ+ and allied organizations attended the event including the Canterbury Fellowship. Canterbury Fellowship coordinator Jordan Bishop said that he attended because, “We’re here to connect with students, particularly queer students. We all need a place to feel whole to connect with the spiritual side of ourselves and so Canterbury Fellowship is an inclusive and affirming space for queer students to do that”.
The Queer Community Coalition, one of the organizers of the event also tabled. Brooke Nolan, Outreach Coordinator for QCC commented, “our club works very closely with Multicultural Affairs to bring spaces to queer kids and adults on campus and just bring people together”. Noting the amount of freshmen attending the event, she said, “It’s just a blast being back with everyone and having such a great community and getting to meet all the new freshmen”.
Freshman Alex Pearson wanted their fellow students to know, “Multicultural Affairs is such a nice place and it’s a safe place for everybody. I feel like anybody should be able to go there, be able to talk, and get information about anything they need help with.”
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