Samantha Schwanke/Winonan

The GLBTA Club hosted its first Pride Week last week, Monday, April 15 through Friday, April 19.

The week was filled with activities and themes to bring awareness to various sexual identity and health concerns.

Alex Paulson, GLBTA’s future outreach coordinator, had the rundown on the club’s plans to celebrate pride in the GLBTA community.

“Pride Week was the GLBTA’s idea to extend the Day of Silence and National Pride Week, and we’re hoping it’ll become ‘Gaypril’ so we’re continuing to expand,” said Paulson.

Every day was planned by a different officer of the club.

They were assigned a day and color and had to come up with an idea and organize a different event.

The club is hoping that this will become an annual event.

This year the club started with purple, which stands for spirit and trans* awareness.
Monday’s event was the trans* panel.

The idea behind the panel was to educate people who are unaware of trans* issues, anything from how to properly address trans* people to what Winona State University and the Winona community have to offer for people of diversity.

Tuesday’s color was green, for health, in particular, sexual health.

“Tuesday we had our sexual awareness day with sex bingo to heighten sex safety, health, and awareness,” Paulson said.

Wednesday was represented by yellow, for happiness.

The club had a game night and ice cream bar in the Diversity Center at 7 p.m. for ally awareness, acknowledging and celebrating those who don’t identity themselves in the GLBTA community, but who support it.

Thursday was Unity Day, represented by the color blue.

“We had an outreach dinner and invited everyone to invite other diversity clubs for cultural and diversity awareness,” Paulson said.

Friday was red, for the National Breaking the Day of Silence, which inspired the whole Pride Week theme.

“This took place at 1:55 p.m. at the Gazebo, because there was a lot of people around for the inauguration and we wanted to bring a lot of attention to the issues,” Paulson said.

“Later that night was the Night of Noise in Baldwin Lounge, which is ironic.  We’re having an open mic night.”

The Night of Noise involved singing and various literary readings.

Paulson said out of all the events, his favorite was the Night of Noise.

“It was fun to see people up there having fun and seeing the various talent we have in the club. It’s the event that we wanted the week to focus on so we’re really happy with its success,” Paulson said.

For students interested in getting involved with GLBTA, the best first step is attending the meetings.

The GLBTA Club meets Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m. on floor three of Minne, Room 334.

Students can also find information on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2244700139/. Or, they can be contacted via email at [email protected].

Contact Samantha at [email protected]